


Shameless Self-Insert Gets Screwed Over In/By Canon Gensokyo, Again

by orphan_account



Category: Touhou Project
Genre: Multi, Parody, Self-Insert, generally just a fun time
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-10-02 01:43:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10206053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: A mediocre story detailing an author's descent into madness.





	1. Philosophical Garbage

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Shameless Self-Insert Gets Screwed Over In and By Canon Gensokyo](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/272837) by William Ungerstein Fmerigo (me). 



> Well, it’s finally here, the rewrite of Shameless Self-Insert Gets Screwed Over In/By Canon Gensokyo! For the people of Archive of Our Own, this’ll be the first time you see the Shameless Self-Insert (etc.) story. If you enjoy it, good for you.  
> And, since many of you are likely seeing this for the first time, allow me to explain what this story even is. It’s a parody, at its core. I approach the tropes of the self-insert genre from a realistic point of view, from the overpowered Gary Stu to gender-bending. Sorry if you’re uncomfortable with that, but most of the chapters that might make people uncomfortable are totally skippable, though I personally suggest not skipping them. Who knows, you might like it. Green Eggs and Ham, people.  
> Oh, and, as you might’ve guessed from the title, I attempt to stick to canon as much as possible, while innovating on top of it. There are quite a few OCs, since nobody can constantly interact with already existing canon characters only, but since the MC is kind of an OC also, it makes a bit of sense…? Maybe. Anyways, sorry in advance for that.  
> Speaking of original content, this is largely a rewrite just to make the original story better, but I’ve changed it up quite a bit from the original, particularly in the MC’s danmaku style. I’m also elaborating on the magic system. Special thanks to SKOOLATOON and the other reviewers of the original story for giving me feedback!  
> Oh, and just so you all know, despite self-insert being in the title ad verbatim, this isn’t about me. The self-insert himself is a caricature, a noun which I highly suggest you look up if you don’t know what it means. Basically, he’s a parody of me, with some of my minor traits played up for hilarity.  
> Now, without further ado, here is the long-awaited rewrite. Welcome to the world of Shameless Self-Insert Gets Screwed Over In and By Canon Gensokyo Again! Yes, the acronym got longer. Now it’s SSIGSOIBCGA. Just in case you needed to know that.

One morning, I woke up, and instead of seeing the ceiling of my room as I did most days, I saw the sky. That was more than enough to tell me what was wrong. After all, knowing what I knew, I already knew exactly where I was and _what_ I was.

I’d become a self-insert in the illusionary land of Gensokyo.

My logic is pretty sound. First off, there’s no way I’d ever wake up outside of my own bed, in someone else’s or otherwise. One of the perks of being, generally, an introvert. Second, I’d never wake up _outside_ , and probably wouldn’t even _go_ outside as long as there was a way to avoid it. Thank goodness for treadmills. They may be expensive, but allowing you to exercise without going outside… um, that aside, Gensokyo. Right.

I took a look around where I’d landed, quite confused at my current predicament. It wasn’t nighttime, luckily enough, so Rumia wouldn’t chase me like she does every self-insert. Thank goodness that Gensokyo’s dangers were mostly nocturnal, at least as far as I knew. Judging by my position relative to the Youkai Mountain, which was easy to pick out due to the villages scattered around its base and side… oh, and the Forest of Magic, of course. That was due east of me, and I could tell it was the Forest of _Magic_ because it was the only forest that had fairies flying over it… okay, well, maybe not.

It seemed I had no idea where I was besides not on Youkai Mountain, which would be the worst place to be in Gensokyo for a human anyways.

I sighed and flopped back down on the grass, immediately regretting my decision because the grass was actually quite wet. It had probably rained recently. That’d absolutely wreak havoc on my hair, though I had other, bigger things to worry about. For instance, now that I was a self-insert, I’d have to contend with Gensokyo’s lifestyle. For example- no computers, no Internet, no toilet… oh jeez, that’d be a huge hurdle to get over. Oh, but _perhaps_ the Scarlet Devil Mansion might have one. It was probably built around the right era for a basic toilet…

As I contemplated the human situation, relying so much on what boiled down to a bunch of tubes and a fancy brick, someone walked up to me. I glanced in their direction briefly enough to gather that they were _probably_ not a youkai, because they weren’t one of the Touhou characters I was familiar with. Though the chance remained that they were an OC and would eat me before I even got started.

“いうりうじゅふえじふぃ川川川えふぉえうぃふぉいつおっり？” the person asked me.

“Wow,” I said to myself. “That must be gibberish Japanese, because while I understand how to _read_ the language nowadays, I still have no clue what anything means. I mean, I’m a self-insert. The world’s linguistics can only match that which I can understand.”

The girl, youkai or not, said something or other back quite annoyedly, and then looked away for a moment before sitting down next to where I lay. Perhaps someone speaking in a gibberish language is entertaining? I don’t know.

I shrugged, not even knowing what she said, and continued my monologue. “So, if there are no toilets in Gensokyo, but I delude myself into thinking there are, they’ll show up, because I’m a self-insert.” I paused, and thought it over. “Actually, wait, I already _know_ there aren’t toilets in Gensokyo. Oh, but if I _pretend_ the language barrier doesn’t exist, it might go away!”

The girl nodded excitedly, though she definitely didn’t follow. I assume she’d realized I was making a powerful point or something.

“Wait, there’s numbers in spellcard names and the theme song titles. I mean, I know the Japanese numbers, but maybe if I say something like １９８７ in those good-old double-spaced numbers, something will happen!”

The girl nodded rapidly, and motioned for me to continue.

“Therefore, by the same logic, spellcard names will work! Like, you know, Bullshit Sign [I’m Trapped in Gensokyo!]”

She sighed, disappointed in me somehow.

“Or, y’know, I could say the bits and pieces of Japanese I know. But that’d be boring, and I don’t think that what I know would be appropriate. I mean, saying ‘you are already dead’ isn’t exactly socially acceptable. Also, that’d defeat the purpose of this entire plot point.”

I stood up, brushed off my hair (which, thanks to its abnormal length, was now muddy) and looked around at the scenery. It was as I’d expected, more or less. The Human Village, or at least _a_ village, was south of me. It was a nice little hamlet, in traditional Japanese style. Well, obviously, because Gensokyo. I glanced back at the girl, who was still sitting down. She was wearing a navy blue yukata, also traditional Japanese clothing. I breathed a sigh of relief. None of the youkai in canon wore ‘traditional’ clothing besides those who could be identified as youkai otherwise.

“Well, at least you’re human.” I nodded. “Okay! From here on out, my mental name for you shall be Blueberry! Because you’re blonde, and yellow is probably the opposite of blue. My elementary school art teacher told me that, I think. Oh, plus the yukata…”

She gave me a questioning look. I wasn’t sure about what. She _was_ blonde. But perhaps she didn’t understand what I was saying. Well, if she didn’t, that’d make naming someone more language-specific than talking about numbers and spellcards, which she’d understood sort of kind of not really.

I sat down in front of her, and pointed at her. “Blueberry,” I said. “You’re Blueberry, because I felt like it.”

Blueberry shook her head. “Tsukimori Ayano,” she said while pointing to herself. In English name order, Ayano Tsukimori.

“Oh.” I sighed. Blueberry was _definitely_ better, as far as name quality went, but I’d have to be sure to call her Ayano from here on out. “Whatever. Blueberry, Ayano… they’re both you, anyways?”

She nodded. It looked like she had the general idea of what I was saying down perfectly fine. “Ayano… _Blueberry_?” she said, continuing to point at herself.

I nodded. “Yes. Correct. _Hai_ , as you’d say.” Blueberry seemed to understand the third one, thankfully, and nodded right back at me.

“All right, good. That’s over with.” I t0ok a moment to think about what I’d just done.

I’d found myself in Gensokyo, immediately began thinking about nothing but poop, and then named the first person I saw Blueberry on what were probably incorrect reasons.

Yep. I was definitely still me.

“ _And you_?” Blueberry asked. And pay attention to the italics there, that’ll be important. See, that’s the little bit of Japanese I actually understand. “ _What’s your name…_ ”

“Oh, William. ウィリアム, if you will.” I pointed at myself, since she’d previously understood that. “Oh, but you can call me Bill, despite the fact that the way Bill is transcribed into katakana makes my nickname _also_ a Japanese word for beer.”

******************

In case any of you are ever stranded in a strange land filled with magic where you don’t speak the language and will probably get eaten, here’s a tip: befriend the natives. It’s possible without words to communicate, after all. I somehow managed to explain that I came through the Hakurei Barrier (which wouldn’t have been possible if I hadn’t been enough of a weeaboo to know what ‘barrier’ was in Japanese), and, well, needless to say, it worked out fine. She understood, after all.

I’d have expected her to bring me to the Hakurei Shrine, as that’s the only place that can lead outsiders back to the outside world, but she had reasons involving the Japanese words ‘youkai’, ‘bad’, and ‘farm’, and so she took me to the Human Village instead.

All-in-all, it worked out pretty well.

******************

Before long, she’d led me to a small wooden house. But while it may have been small, it certainly was homey. It had a few rooms and an upstairs area, from what I could see as Ayano led me to the living room, or what I assumed was the living room. I’d hope the house was hers, at least for the sake of my Gensokyan criminal record. It seemed she’d realized that I knew a little Japanese by now, and asked me to sit down and wait in the room for her to come back. So, simply enough, I did. One thing I’d need to do in Gensokyo would be to simply not anger anyone. That would only mean bad things.

As I sat, I thought about the language problem. It was larger than I’d initially anticipated, after all, as I’d just realized that in Gensokyo, everyone would be speaking classical Japanese. It was more-or-less the same, despite the fact that it had no words stolen from English. That would mean half of my knowledge of the language was now void, or just wrong. At least what I’d been saying was largely noun-free.

After a little while, I heard argument coming from upstairs. I couldn’t make out much, but it seemed Ayano was arguing with two other people, one male and one female, both older than her. I chuckled, thinking that it might’ve been the people who actually owned the house, before I came to the shocking realization that it was probably her parents. That meant she was a bit younger than I’d thought.

I immediately felt more awkward.

******************

Before long, Ayano came downstairs with a triumphant smile on her face. She had won the argument, and she’d won it spectacularly. She took me upstairs, introduced me to her parents as best she could (Suzuki Tsukimori and Mamika Tsukimori), and then to an empty room. Thanks to the wonderful power of context clues, I realized what she was offering me. Simply enough, a place to stay. Whatever the conditions surrounding that were, it was incredibly generous of her.

I was moved nearly to tears. She truly had the heart of a Canadian. Or, rather, Gensokyan. And that’s how I began my life in Gensokyo, and more specifically, in the Tsukimori household.


	2. The Human Village is OK

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life in the human village is slightly better than expected. Kind of.

“William!” Ayano shook me. “Get up!”

“Oh, jeez, what time is it?” I sat up in my futon, still groggy from the rather extreme sleeping I’d been doing.

“It’s 10! 10, Will!” Ayano shouted. “You need to go help in the fields!”

“Oh, crap.” I got _all_ the way up this time, tossed my futon into the closet, shooed Ayano out of my room, and started getting dressed.

Oh, and in case you’re confused, well… Apparently, it’s _far_ easier for me to teach a language than to learn one. See, I already knew how to say ‘something is something else’ in Japanese, and it’s oddly easy to apply that to teaching a language. It just requires patience and someone who’s willing to have you tell them what random objects are called for hours on end each day.

Oh, and speaking of which, I need to buy a dictionary.

******************

As you’ve probably guessed, I went out into the fields that day. After all, there’s absolutely no way the Tsukimori family would let me freeload, especially with the way Ayano’s father is. He’s a Gensokyan success story, a man who started with a farm and turned it into a business. Nowadays, he doesn’t even _have_ to work. He can just let his hired helpers do it all for him, and the profits will pay their salaries, get the farm set for next year, and leave a hefty sum for him, the owner. Gensokyan capitalism has its merits.

Oh, and the toilet issue turned out to be not as big of an issue as I thought. See, Gensokyo doesn’t have _toilets_ , but they have bathrooms. They’re more like outhouses, and you have to empty them out sometimes. I do that now, in addition to the farm work. Apparently Ayano used to do it, but her mother didn’t want her to, and then her father said… well, long story short, I empty buckets of shit into a fertilizer heap sometimes. Honestly, though, I wouldn’t be surprised if they invented toilets soon, since, apparently, about 20% of youkai killings happen on the way to an outhouse. Particularly ones that are extraordinarily far away from their respective house.

But, that aside, it had been a few months since I entered Gensokyo, and much to my surprise, nothing had happened. Either the Gensokyan summer is just uneventful, or ZUN seriously overexaggerates incident frequency. But, either way, I was fine with that. I’d just started to settle in, after all. And, to be frank, I was enjoying working on a Gensokyan farm more than my life outside. Gensokyo was just nicer.

And, apparently me thinking that jinxed it, because everything immediately began to go badly.

******************

After work that day, Ayano and I sat on the porch, drinking tea. We often did. It was a relaxing way to pass the time, after all, and the idle conversation helped her learn English faster. Though, on this particular day, our conversation’s course was suddenly changed by Ayano.

“I think you’ve adjusted really well to Gensokyo.” She smiled warmly. “I mean, at first I was worried that you were going to be unable to work. Or, for that matter, to communicate. But you’ve taught me a language, and you already knew about crop rotation before even starting work.”

“You can thank my middle school social studies teacher for that. She was very enthusiastic about agriculture.”

“Agriculture?”

“Things related to farming.”

“Oh. Well, that aside, you’ve never even mentioned those computer things once in maybe a month. It’s pretty incredible, considering how much you talked about them before.” Ayano took a sip of her tea, and continued. “Not to mention, for an outsider, you seem to know a lot about Gensokyo. It made me doubt you _were_ an outsider, at first, but by that point you were working, so it didn’t matter anyways.”

I chuckled. I didn’t want to explain my knowledge of Gensokyo, which would break the fourth wall and any suspension of disbelief, too, so I expertly deflected the issue with a little quip. “Capitalism runs in your blood, huh?”

Ayano smiled at my ‘joke’. “Yes, I’d say so. But I think at this point it’s fairly certain you’re an outsider. Mostly because of your inability to cook.”

Ah, yes, cooking. The thing about Gensokyo is that _everyone_ cooks, male, female, or otherwise. It was a valuable skill in a world that lacks microwaves. Also, coincidentally, one I do not have. Unless making a sandwich counts as cooking.

Ayano noticed my discomfort and changed the subject. “So, what was life in the outside world like?” Unfortunately, she asked something equally uncomfortable.

I sighed. “Well, it was pretty boring. The same thing every single day, you know. Get up, eat, go to work, go home, eat, sleep. The monotony wasn’t so bad, honestly, but it builds stress. And I had literally nobody to talk to about it. Though, that’s a common problem, so I can’t complain about _that_. But, see, my only outlet for stress was writing. And I did a lot of that, and it was great, but it got old after a while. I still did it, though. At least it was sort of fun.”

“Monotony? Um…” She thought for a moment. “What about just before you came to Gensokyo?” Ayano asked. “What did you do to end up here?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure I…” I thought for a while, and came up with nothing. Great. Amnesia. Yet another self-insert trope to plop down upon the hundreds of others. “I think my last memory before showing up here was getting take-out from some restaurant.”

“Oh.” She was noticeably disappointed, probably because I hadn’t told her anything else about the outside world, really. But that was probably for the best. I didn’t want to depress her, after all.

There was a pause in the conversation, though it wasn’t so much awkward as relaxed. We’d finished a branch of conversation, and we were taking a moment to enjoy the sun and have our tea. Unfortunately, we were rudely interrupted.

“ _YO!_ ” a voice shouted from behind us.

I turned around, and saw none other than Marisa Kirisame busting into the house and shouting ‘yo’ at Ayano. Then, I turned back to Ayano, with a quizzical look on my face to reflect my complete and utter confusion at this incredibly sudden development.

Ayano sighed. “So, did I mention I have cousins?”

******************

Marisa laughed, apparently finding the whole situation more hilarious than my complete and total inability to understand anything she was saying.

Ayano shook her head disapprovingly. Clearly, she wasn’t amused by Marisa’s antics. Or personality. One of the two. “Can I just say we’re _second_ cousins?” she said. “We’re barely blood related. So don’t associate me with her.”

“Okay, sure, but why’s she here? What’s the story behind that?”

Ayano chuckled angrily. “She angered one of the village elders and got banned from entering the village for a few weeks. Of course, she still wanted to enter the village, so she decided she’d sneak into _this_ house because she knows that I’m too polite to kick out family, even if it’s _distant_ family-”

Marisa interjected in Japanese, saying something that sounded like ‘bring me booze’ as far as my current understanding of the language could tell. Ayano responded angrily, before Marisa said something _else_ that was, apparently, more reasonable.

“Okay, so she says she understands some of what you’re saying, so she’s going to try to talk to you.” Ayano sighed. “Of _course_ she does.”

“Wait, was that first bit…?”

“Yes. She asked me for alcohol.” Ayano smiled. “But, while I said I would, I’m not getting her any. If she wants any, she’ll have to beg on her hands and knees.”

“Um…” Marisa said. “Hello! I am speaking… English!” She had trouble pronouncing the ‘l’ sound, a common problem with Japanese-speaking English learners. I’d taught Ayano how to distinguish the two quite early on when teaching her English, but apparently Marisa had not had such tutoring.

“That’s pretty good, actually. Where’d you learn your English?”

“Magic books…” Marisa thought, “Necronomicon? 3rd edition.”

“Oh, jeez…” Of course. Of _course_ it was the Necronomicon. Apparently an English-translated one, too. “Um, you know, if you’re uncomfortable with English, don’t just speak it for my sake. I know how hard it is to speak a language you don’t really understand.”

Marisa breathed a sigh of relief, and asked Ayano something. Ayano responded with an ‘okay’, to my surprise.

“So…” Ayano said. “She wants me to translate what she’s saying over to you so you two can chat.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

Ayano smiled. “Despite how much I hate her, I’ve been given the opportunity to be the first English-Japanese translator in Gensokyo. That’s nothing to turn down.”

******************

And so, my conversation with Marisa Kirisame, the Ordinary Magician, began.

“Hah!” Marisa began strong with a hard-to-translate word. “Bet you weren’t expecting _me_ to come through that door!”

“What door?”

“The one I entered through! The front one!”

“I only saw you once you were inside, with the door closed.”

“Oh. That’s a shame, because I kicked the _heck_ out of that door.” Marisa chuckled. “Well, that aside, you sure ain’t the politest of folks, huh? That’s fine, I’m an informal gal myself. Anyways, who are you, why are you speaking English, why is Ayano speaking English, and why are you at my second-cousin’s house?”

“Oh, well, in order, I’m an outsider, my name’s William, and I know English because that’s the most common language where I come from. I taught Blueberry English, and I’m here because I have nowhere else to go.”

Marisa nodded. Ayano had translated ‘Blueberry’ as ‘Ayano’, which was probably for the best in this case. “Well, that makes sense, if nothing else,” Marisa said. “But, wow, how’d you get through the Hakurei Barrier? I need to know this, mostly for scientific purposes.”

I chuckled. Of course she’d want to pierce it. She was Marisa, after all. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not sure how.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, it just… happened, I guess.”

Marisa sighed. “Well, that’s a shame. I guess you were just forgotten or something. Forgotten things tend to end up here.”

“Well, I mean…” I thought for a moment. Yukari is a Fine Gentleman, one of my fanfictions, had thousands of views. Not to mention the pre-rewrite version of this, which had hit eight thousand views somehow… “I think at _least_ a thousand people outside have my name stowed _somewhere_ in their memory,” I admitted.

“Well, that leaves a few things. Either Yukari’s fooling around again, or it’s one of Eirin’s shady new drugs.”

“But templates like that are forbidden,” I completed without even waiting for Ayano to translate. I at least knew my memes.

Marisa laughed. “Took the words right out of my mouth! That’s sort of a saying I have, an in-joke if you will. Most incidents boil down to one of those, especially the thing with the Lunarians recently which was both Yukari fooling around _and_ we had to use a shady new drug.”

“Well, the Yukari one sounds possible.” Most self-inserts tend to end up in Gensokyo that way.

“Ah, well…” Marisa thought for a moment. “I doubt that. It’s not _unheard_ of for her to do things like that, but… she doesn’t tend to take humans from the outside word. Usually it’s signs, metal boxes, or something like that. But there is a third possibility, in-jokes aside.”

“Hmm?” I thought for a moment, but came up with nothing. “I can’t think of one, myself.”

“You could have unlocked some inner magical potential. Real magic’s unheard of outside, from what Reimu and Yukari say, so you’d end up in Gensokyo for sure if you found a way to use it.”

“Ah, I guess. But it doesn’t really matter how I got here. I’m here now, aren’t I?”

Marisa gave me a strange look. “So, you’re… you’re saying that you don’t care what sent you here and what could potentially send you back? You just want to live a practical Gensokyan life with whatever you’ve got.”

“Yeah.” I shrugged. “This is Gensokyo. There’s nothing much to do besides just live, and I am 100% okay with that. Oh, but don’t forget cape girl. She’s a living disproof of the ‘inner magic’ theory.”

“Well, she’s an exception. I’m curious where you heard about that, but…” Marisa sighed. “Anyways, if you’ve got magic power in you, and you’re a human, you’ll smell really dang good to youkai.”

“Oh, boy.”

“Exactly. So, I’ve got a present for you.” Marisa took off her hat, reached into it, and pulled out a book. She slid it across the table to me.

“Hammerspace?” I asked. Ayano raised an eyebrow, and I found myself explaining hammerspace to her. Eventually, she came up with the proper word, which was apparently quite common in Gensokyo, and translated.

“Yeah.” Marisa patted her hat. “I hate pockets, and this is a great alternative. Most magicians don’t bother, though. Anyways, that aside, what I just gave you is a 3rd Edition Necronomicon. A magic book in a language you speak and probably read. Given that you actually have magical power, you might be able to use it for self-defense.”

“This isn’t stolen, is it?”

Marisa looked offended. “Hey, I can buy my own books sometimes, too,” she responded.

“Oh, sorry. I guess I shouldn’t have assumed something like that.” I flipped through the book. Despite being a Necronomicon, it was a pretty ordinary hardcover book, at least on the outside. The cover was grey, with NECRONOMICON printed in gold letters on the front. The inside, though, despite being in English, was largely unintelligible. “So, is this for danmaku, or what?”

“Oh, it’s just a general-purpose dark magic tome. I use light magic, though, so it’s completely incompatible. I’ve no use for it, so consider it a hand-me-down from the Ordinary Magician herself!” Marisa smiled smugly, as if that fact was supposed to make it better.

“But, wait, that doesn’t answer my question.”

“Well, I mean, I just skimmed it once I realized it was dark-magic, so I’ve no clue. But it’s in English, which you’re clearly fluent in, so why the heck not?”

******************

“I’ve got a grimoire now,” I said.

“Yes, yes you do,” Ayano responded. “Aren’t you going to read it?”

“Well… see…” I sighed, but with a smile on my face. “I have a feeling that if I read this, things will start to be interesting. I’ll basically lose my everyday life.”

“Is that such a bad thing?” Ayano asked. “I mean, no offense, but you’re a _farmer_. That’s not exactly a good job.”

I chuckled. “True.”

I opened the book.


	3. Party is an anagram of Hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting up late to drink booze and make friends? In short, it sucks.

Some days, when you wake up, there’s a smiling face to greet you. Others, there’s nobody. I’m fine with both of these. However, I am _not_ fine with angry people waking me up. Now, I bet you’re wondering how that’s relevant.

Psych. It’s not. Ayano shook me awake, as always. The only reason I brought it up in the first place is because it was nighttime, which was not usually what happened.

See, my schedule generally went like this: wake up at 7, eat food, work in the farms for a while, eat lunch, work more, eat dinner, and then I go to sleep at 7, allowing for 12 hours of sleep. That was more-or-less how most of my days went, excluding those when I slept in too late. Thankfully, these were few and far between since Ayano had taken to checking on me at around 7:00 AM to make sure I was awake. The downside was that I’d become too dependent on her, and so my subconscious’ version of the schedule had taken a complexity nosedive into ‘wake up after Ayano shows up, work, eat things sometimes, and then sleep ASAP’.

“Will! Wake up!”

My brain’s internal Ayano circuits triggered, and I sat up in bed. “Yeah?” I asked.

Ayano smiled. “There’s a party going on down at the Kagome family’s bar! It’s a great opportunity for you to make friends! Especially since your Japanese has been improving!” She was undoubtedly excited.

“ _Yeah_ , nope.” I lay back down in my futon, and closed my eyes. “I’ve got you. That’s equivalent to fifty friends, accounting for inflation of the currency.”

I promptly went back to sleep.

******************

“Will! Wake up!” Ayano shook me even harder. “You can’t compliment someone and then just ignore them!”

I groaned and looked out the window. The moon had not moved since she had last woken me up. Judging from that, she’d let me fall mostly asleep (which probably took five minutes or so) and _then_ decided to wake me up.

I sat up. “Yeah?”

“Party,” Ayano said. She held up a men’s dress yukata. “Booze. Friends.”

“No.”

“I’ll have Dad fire you if you don’t.”

“Okay, fine.”

******************

I grumbled as we walked along the lantern-lit streets of the Human Village. It was somewhat of a calming sight, admittedly, but I didn’t want to be here.

Ayano had bought me a yukata to wear, since the farm-friendly clothes I usually wore were both kind of messy and also just not proper social wear. However, she had been kind enough to at least sort of consider my fashion sense when buying one, and had picked darker, more subdued colors. More specifically, a dark-blue one.

I sighed. “And yet again, I find myself forced to obey the whims of a rich man’s daughter.”

“Yet again?” Ayano laughed, as if I’d made an actual joke that was actually good. “I’ve only played around with my rights as your employer’s daughter once! And he’s not _that_ rich.”

“Well, at least you admit it. But it was twice. Getting me into the job in the first place was the first. For an ex-shut-in like myself, it was _tricky._ I’d probably still be better in accounting or something.”

“My father does all the math himself, though. To keep his mind active.” Ayano thought for a moment. “You know, I think I might have an abacus somewhere. I’d be interested in seeing how good you are with that.”

“Yeah, no thanks.” Abaci… abacuses? Whatever the plural was, I had never used one before and wasn’t planning on it, either. If it doesn’t have the ability to compute sine, it’s not even worth looking at.

There was some silence between us for a few minutes as we walked. It wasn’t too unusual, especially given how tired I was, but…

“Say, what time is it?” I asked.

“Oh, only about 10. Why?”

“Ah. Just checking.” Well, that was half of it. I was checking my answer, really. I’d been practicing telling time by the positions of stars and the moon, and the sun during the daytime. I’d gotten okay at it. Funny that Renko calls it a power, since it’s really more of a skill. Knowing where she is 24/7 though, that’s a power. Especially in Gensokyo, where ‘where’ is more of a sometimes thing. Things just… show up, sometimes. New places, houses, and so forth. It was apparently usual for the few resident youkai of the village to fly over Gensokyo and find that it had become bigger, due to some landmass just appearing out of nowhere. And it wasn’t always around the edges, either, so it wasn’t just the Hakurei Barrier expanding. When ZUN said Gensokyo just expanded sometimes, I’d thought he meant figuratively. Clearly, though, that was not the case.

As I pondered this, however, I noticed a perfect opportunity to escape. A nearby alleyway between a candy shop and some other building was fast approaching, and it would allow me to slip away from Ayano flawlessly, at least in theory. I put my plan into action as it grew closer, and-

Ayano grabbed my arm, rather hard. It kind of hurt.

“You’re not getting away _that_ easily,” she said with an honest, pure-hearted smile. “You’re going to drink alcohol, make friends, and have a good time.”

“Jeez. Are you even above legal drinking age here?” Actually, that was a _very_ good question. I’d no idea what legal drinking age was in Gensokyo. I mean, probably pretty low, considering everything, but on the off-chance it was something crazy like 200 due to the youkai population…

But, as a pretty indicative answer to my question, Ayano just gave me a strange look. “I mean…” She shrugged. “We don’t let kids drink.  But that’s not the law. Just common sense.”

“What exactly is a ‘kid’ here? I mean, there’s youkai that look maybe seven that are probably older than I am.”

“Oh, well, in that case, I’d say we generally let people start drinking at eleven. But it varies from family to family.”

“Well.” That was basically everything I needed to know about Gensokyo’s legal system right there: it was mostly a trust-based system, with the likely exclusion of crimes that were more obviously crimes, like stealing and murder. And somehow it worked?

I shook my head. The outside world needed to take pointers from here.

******************

I’d say that my entire attitude about that party was set from the minute I entered to see a very strong-looking wolf youkai standing triumphant over a pile of bodies, laughing maniacally.

“How’s that?” she yelled. “Had enough yet?”

The bartender turned to her and chuckled lightly. “Miss, could I perhaps ask you to take your fights outside?”

“You want some of this, huh?” The wolf youkai flexed her arm muscles. “Didn’t think _you_ of all people would…”

The youkai’s bragging came to a slow halt as the bartender drew a musket from under the table and aimed it at the youkai.

“Miss, as I’m sure you’re aware, this is the White Rose. It has been passed down in the Kagome family for generations, and it is more than capable of causing even you extreme pain. Keep in mind I am _not_ asking you to not fight. I am asking you to take them outside. If you moved outside, you could punch as many people as you liked.” The barkeeper smiled. “Or you can stay in here and punch _me_ , and face the consequences.”

The wolf youkai sighed. “Jeez, fine…” She slung the downed men over her shoulder effortlessly and left the room.

I blinked a couple of times, breathed in, and began walking backwards, away from the bar.

Ayano’s grip on my arm increased in strength. “It’s just an ordinary bar fight,” she said with determination in her voice. “We’re staying until everyone passes out, Will.”

“You’re asking a guy who doesn’t know Japanese to talk to people.”

“On the contrary, William, I would say your Japanese rivals even mine at this point, considering all the obscure words you decided to learn for whatever reason. And the dictionary you bought, and the thesaurus, not to mention the grammar reference books and lists of verbs…” Ayano turned to look at me with a half-smile, half-grimace. “What I’m _saying_ here is that, to put it bluntly, you learned the language _too_ damn well.”

I sighed. “Fine.” I switched to Japanese. “I’m going to regret this.”

Ayano nodded, and switched to Japanese herself. “Good.”

******************

I’d love to say I immediately found someone nice to talk to, and drank the night away. Unfortunately, that was _not_ what happened. And, unlike what I bet many of you would expect, I didn’t just talk with Ayano the whole time, either. She immediately began chatting with some of her friends.

Instead, I bought a beer, found a nice empty corner of the bar counter, and listened.

The bartender, as I learned, was named Kayo Kagome, and she was the fifth heir to this bar’s ownership and also to the White Rose, a weapon crafted by the first family head. I was curious who in the world managed to make a gun in Gensokyo, of all places, until someone mentioned that it fired ‘kick-ass danmaku’. That answered my question quite simply. It was just a danmaku focus that was made to look like a gun, probably based on some picture from an outside world magazine.

There really was some intriguing lore behind the bar, but my interest in that waned as I realized there were _far_ more interesting… no, that’s the wrong word. There were more _distracting_ stories being told among the youkai.

And yes, despite it being the Human Village, there was a sizeable youkai population. They didn’t eat humans, at least not in the village, which was nice of them. They just ate their meat very raw, which apparently was an okay substitute. Basically, they were the youkai equivalent of vegans. And they were nice enough, don’t get me wrong, but they had stories of Gensokyo’s past to tell. And they weren’t pretty.

“And so, I _bashed_ in that guy’s skull, and his eyes bulged out like a _bug_ when he saw his brains on the floor!” a fox youkai told a table of very drunk violence-enthusiasts, both human and youkai. There was a resounding laugh from them, until the butterfly youkai amongst them said something along the lines of ‘my eyes don’t bulge though’.

I sighed and finished my beer. It was good, compared to the maybe three other beers I’d had in my lifetime. The thing about alcoholic drinks, especially beers, is that they taste bad, fundamentally. People just get used to it. I’d never wanted to, though. I mean, wine would probably be more to my tastes, but… it’s _expensive_.

“Yo, yo!” A drunk brunette girl in a brown short-sleeved yukata stumbled up to me. Her skin was tanned, which was quite unusual given Gensokyo’s climate. “Hey!” she said to me in an overly friendly tone of voice. “Person… Yeah. Buy me a drink!”

“No?” I said with the certainty of a dead platypus. That is to say, lots. Because it’s certainly dead. See, metaphors aren’t exactly my strong suit… anyways, I digress.

“Aw, c’mon!” She flopped down onto the bar stool next to me. “I’m out of cash…”

I was about to refuse again, when I realized that I had brought some spending money (read as: been forced to bring spending money) and had nothing to do with it. “What the hell,” I said. “What do you want?”

“Gimme beer…”

“Okay, sure.” I gestured for the bartender to come over. After serving a couple other customers, she came over to my side of the counter.

“I’m buying her a beer, for some reason,” I explained, and handed the bartender the cash.

“That tends to happen a lot here,” she commented as she counted it up, before pouring the girl a beer. Then, without much further ado, she practically slid off to the next customer

I watched as the girl I’d bought the beer for took a very, very long drink from it. When she put down the tankard, it was half-empty.

“Yo, thank…y…” As she spoke, her head dropped for just a moment before she managed to swing it back upwards. “Ugh,” she commented.

“Well, I’ve never been called ‘yugh’ before.” I watched as she attempted to gather her thoughts. You could practically _see_ her brain moving.

“Ah!” she said as she came to a conclusion of some sort. “Nice… to meet… you!” she managed to get out. “My name’s Tani!”

“Cool.” I then remembered, with all the spontaneity of a crappy Cartoon Network show, that it was customary to introduce yourself as well. “Oh, I’m William. I go by Bill sometimes.”

“Bill, hah… that’s like beer, but Bill…” Tani laughed. “Funny! Yeah!”

“Yeah, ha… ha?” I said weakly, unable to comprehend the complex machinations of her thought processes.

She sniffed. “Oh…” she yawned. “You smell really good.”

“Um, _excuse me_?”

“Yeah, it’s like…” Tani sniffled again. “You smell like really good magic, like, neck rowing magic… yo, I’m gonna… like, you wanna come back to my place? I’ve got a whole _roast turkey,_ and like, _broccoli_.”

I rubbed my forehead, and took a moment to figure out what was happening. I had been alone at a bar, and bought someone a beer on a whim. They called me ‘yugh’, and then started hitting on me in possibly the most pathetic way I have ever heard. Though, admittedly, I’d never heard someone being hit upon, but a roast turkey, of all things? And broccoli? Seriously? That might be a good meal, sure, but a lure? No.

“I’ll have to pass,” I said. “It’s a Friday, sure, but I, um…” I thought my hardest, attempting to think of a believable excuse. “I have my own roast turkey.” And, as always, my mind failed me.

However, Tani took this quite well. “Wow…” she looked at me with… admiration? “I’m impressed. _Even I_ don’t have a roast turkey.”

“You don’t?” This was getting harder and harder to comprehend. “But you said…”

“I forgot. I’ve got broccoli, though.” She chuckled drunkenly. “My offer still stands.”

“You’re _really_ drunk, aren’t you?”

“Hah, yeah!” Tani smiled. “You’re cool. You bought me a drink.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Yeah. So…” Tani’s brow furrowed as she thought. “We’re friends now!” she exclaimed, and swung an arm over my shoulder.

“Okay…?” I was having quite a bit of trouble following her thought process. At times, it was slow and stupid, unable to comprehend anything, and at others, it made incredible logical bounds that I wasn’t even capable of understanding.

“So buy me another drink.”

“…well, I’ve no reason _not_ to, but I’m kind of out of money.” I’d only brought enough for two drinks. I didn’t think I’d be having more, never mind needing to pay for them.

“Okay, sure. I’m not a _jerk_ , I won’t force ya. But I’ll buy one myself, then!”

“Wait, weren’t you… out of money?”

Tani laughed. “Nope!”

******************

When I left, Ayano caught up with me relatively quickly. Neither of us were actually drunk, as we’d only really had one relatively small drink each, but we’d enjoyed ourselves. In our own ways.

Ayano smiled at me. “Glad to see you made a friend.”

“Kind of?” I sighed. “But yeah, she was completely incomprehensible.”

“Most drunks are.” Ayano chuckled. “But that aside, do you know who she is?”

“No.”

“Neither do I.” Ayano looked back towards the bar. “But it seems like she’s… following us. Should I stop her, do you think?”

“If she tries to enter the house, yes. Until then, it’s fine.” I turned around and looked. Tani was, indeed, following us. Rather drunkenly, of course, and she was swaying from side to side as she did. I wasn’t confident she’d be able to keep up with two mostly sober people walking.

“Actually, wait, I want to talk to her.” Ayano glanced towards me. “I’ll be waiting for her to catch up.”

“Guess I’ll wait too. I’m… kind of curious why you’d want to talk to such a drunk, um, drunk,” I ended lamely.

And, so we waited for maybe thirty seconds as Tani stumbled towards us hopelessly.

“Urgh…” She stood still for a bit to catch her breath, and presumably her balance. “William. Thanks for the favor, yo. I won’t forget it.”

“Okay, but…” Ayano looked at her. “Can you stay still?”

“Yeah…” Tani tried her absolute best to stay still for Ayano, who walked around behind her, and then nodded.

“William, uh…” Ayano sighed. “You might’ve made friends with someone troublesome.”

“Ow… I’m here, you know-” Tani yelped as Ayano poked her in the shoulder. And then a tail sprouted from behind her. More specifically, that of a tanuki. It was maybe as big as her torso. That indicated that she was not only a bake-danuki, but also a relatively high-class one at that.

“Their tails show up better when they’re surprised.” Ayano sighed. “She had it shrunken down as far as she possibly could, so I’m not surprised you didn’t notice. After all, you’re not the sort to stare at someone’s buttocks intently enough to see.”

“And you _are_?”

“Well…” Ayano blushed slightly. “Yes? I grew up among the sort of youkai who do this sort of thing, so it’s a bad habit of mine.”

Tani nodded. “Good excuse. I like excuses.” Then she collapsed onto the street.

I sighed. “So now we’ve got to drag her all the way to somewhere she can sleep peacefully, huh. Do we have a guest room?”

Ayano nodded. “But seriously, Will. Tanuki take repaying favors _really_ seriously, especially ones done out of just pure kindness. Are you sure you want to help her _more_?”

“…it couldn’t be _that_ bad, could it? Here, help me carry her.”

“Sure…” Ayano slung one of Tani’s arms over her shoulder, and we picked her up together and began walking home. “But, Will?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Bake-danuki are really obsessive.”

“Which means?”

“You might’ve set out to make a friend, sure, but now you’ve made one that’s likely to follow you around until you die.”

“Okay, sure, but I’m not leaving someone to sleep in the street.”

Ayano nodded. “Okay, you pass the ‘okay person’ test.”

“What?”

“That was a test. Making sure you’d still do something nice even if it meant bad things for you.”

“Had your suspicions, eh?” I chuckled. “I wouldn’t say those are unfounded. I used to be that sort of person, one that’d only do that sort of thing if it meant something good for me. But Gensokyo’s left a mark on me, I suppose. I used to be sort of a shut-in who would avoid most people at all costs, but now? I’ve been forced to rely on people, and I’d say that in this case, that’s a good thing.”

Ayano giggled. “So cheesy.”

“Oh, shut up. This is TVTropes fodder already, you don’t need to bring it up in-universe just to make it worse.”

“What?”

“Um, never mind. Lampshading is a big no-no here, I guess.” I sighed. One downside to relying on people- One day, they’d probably figure out the existence of the fourth wall that I so desperately tried to simultaneously ignore and hide.

Well, I guess there’s ups and downs to everything.


	4. Insert Cucumber Joke Here (insert? get it? joke)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Kappa Bazaar- unfriendly, not fun, dangerous, and not that rewarding. What could possibly go wrong?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter's a little late! I had a weird Sunday. Anyways, here's the chapter.

I walked my way through the crowd of youkai very, very carefully. As a human, it would only be a matter of time before I was detected and destroyed. Not to mention eaten. The good news, though, was that it was daytime, and human-eating was generally a thing done in private. I mean, here I was, at the Kappa Bazaar, one of the most open youkai-hosted events in Gensokyo, which some youkai exterminators regularly visited. They couldn’t really… you know, eat people there.

I shook my head, completely in disbelief of what I was doing. I’d come to the Kappa Bazaar, and what was my goal? Why, that was simple. A computer. Especially one with a word processor of some kind. Writing was, after all, my favorite pastime. However, my hands were far more suited to typing than actual physical writing, so I had been sadly unable to do any since I’d arrived in Gensokyo. It had been a year now, and I was doing possibly the most stupid thing I’d done yet.

Ayano had been quite worried. She’d actually seemed to think I could die here. I would laugh, but drawing attention to myself could get me killed. Because, while _eating_ humans was generally done in private, dragging them off to a private place was actually _quite_ common. And, well… there were already enough eyes and noses following me to be a possible issue. Figuratively, of course. Though actual eyes and noses following me wouldn’t be super strange, given that I was in Gensokyo of all places.

“Should’ve just popped over to Kourindou…” I mumbled under my breath, hoping nobody would actually hear me in the din of the crowd. It was certainly the safer option for outside world goods, but considering that the kappa innovated on top of human inventions, making them _better_? It was the better choice. Especially considering that Kourindou probably wouldn’t have anything pre-bundled with an operating system, not to mention a word processor or a battery. Oh, and the Internet was _completely_ out of the question.

On a different note, I had learned that the Hakurei Shrine was more than fully equipped for returning me to the outside world. Generally, self-inserts learned this, left, and were all like, ‘oops! I’m in Japan, which has no subtitles!’ Thankfully, I have the amazing ability to speak Japanese because I know Japanese. Wow. But I wasn’t leaving, because, let’s face it, the outside world is and was boring as all hell. The abandoned corners of Former Hell, that is. Which is about as boring as it gets, from what I’ve heard.

“We’ve got all the best prices on outside world goods!” a vendor shouted. “Please stop by our stall!”

Oh, yeah, also? I was now 100% fluent in the language. Living in a place that only speaks it helps, not to mention having someone to teach you the language. To put it in as few words as possible? Score. My friends are _cool_.

I walked over to the stall with the very enthusiastic vendor and was surprised to find Nitori unpacking boxes in the back of the stall. I suppose as a prominent kappa, it made sense for her to be working at the bazaar.

I looked over the merchandise they were displaying. It was all relatively old technology. Things like flip-phones, early computers, and digital cameras were spread out along the table. Nothing I could reasonably use, at least without a floppy disc and 10 whole bytes of RAM. I was honestly about to leave, in an attempt to avoid unnecessary contact with canon characters, when Nitori brought up the next wave of merchandise.

It was a Microsoft Pocket PC. An early attempt at a portable device capable of preforming all the functions of a PC, which had ultimately flopped. No wonder they were in Gensokyo. Forgotten things tend to end up here, and I was probably one of the few people left who remembered that they existed. I’d used one back when I was… what, seven years old? It was one of the first computers I’d crashed in my entire life.

That aside, it was absolutely _perfect_. RTF and DOC had been the standard for documents at the time it had been released, and RTF was the format almost all of my stories were written in. Not to mention, its other functions were just advanced enough for it to be usable. The hard drive might be a little low-capacity, but maybe the kappa did something to it? It never hurt to hope.

“Um, excuse me, I don’t mean to bother you, but what’re the hardware specs on that thing?” I asked the vendor, who looked an awful lot friendlier than Nitori and also didn’t have a canon Human Friendship Rating of Very Low and threat level of High. Thankfully I’d picked up a bit of the local technobabble from nearby conversations, otherwise the word ‘specs’ would’ve probably eluded me.

“Ah, I’m sorry, you’ll have to ask Ms. Kawashiro about that.” The vendor turned back and called Nitori up. Crap.

Nitori groaned as soon as she saw me. “Ugh, a human. An outsider, too?”

“Yeah, sorry.”

“You’d better be.” Nitori pointed to the Pocket PC. “This thing’s got maybe 2 gigs of storage, something that’s less than that in RAM, and it’s loaded with a homebrew OS. The battery works on a minute nuclear fusion reactor…”

Nitori cleared her throat, and continued. “That is, I’m told, _courtesy of the_ _Moriya Shrine,_ ” she said in a voice I assumed was an imitation of Sanae’s, _“_ and that’ll last maybe a year or two. You can get it refilled at the _Moriya Shrine, please stop by for our famous pork buns, better than any other ones, we swear_! and that’ll keep it going another year. _There is ZERO risk of meltdown or external radiation, due to patented Moriya Shrine technologies! Please visit the Moriya shrine! Please? Where is everyone going?_ ”

I nodded. Her Sanae impression was getting less flattering by the second, though. “Does it work with RTF?”

“Yeah, built in processor handles that and TXT. You should be good on that front.” Nitori glanced down at the Pocket PC. “You gonna buy it or not? _1% of your purchase goes towards the Moriya Shrine!_ ”

“Ah, yeah, let me get my money out…” I reached into my wallet and pulled out a few coins. I had been saving for this for a while, actually. I handed over the coins. “Please don’t donate these to the Moriya Shrine.”

Nitori smirked. “Got a sense of humor, huh? I appreciate that. And you don’t have to worry about actually donating, that part was a joke.” She grimaced. “ _That_ part, anyways. That aside, yeah, take your damn thingy and get out of my sight before I eat you.”

I didn’t need telling twice. I freaking _booked_ it. I mean, it was more like a slow walk, because of the crowd density, but… eh? I get kudos for getting out within the hour.

******************

And, as I got far enough out of earshot, I let out a massive laugh. Nitori was, in reality, _quite_ different to her fanon portrayal. She didn’t seem to be nearly as chipper, never mind at all, for one. Hina had been nowhere to be seen, which was probably good considering her powers, and… I laughed.

“You okay, kid?” a voice asked from behind me as I began to cough from laughing too hard.

“Ah, yeah, I’m okay. I just met someone, and they were different from my expectations. Quite the opposite, in fact.” I continued to laugh, but abruptly stopped when I heard whoever was behind me cracking their knuckles.

I turned and saw a blue-haired… well, you know who it is. There’s no need to explain. It was Nitori, standing at a menacing foot shorter than I was. Normally, I wouldn’t have been intimidated at all. But she was also kind of one of the most dangerous youkai mentioned in the first guidebook, second 0nly to Yuuka and Yukari (which is a 0/10 ship, by the way, worst ship, you should be ashamed of yourself, they’ve never even met in canon).

“Um, why were you following me?” I asked as politely as I possibly could.

Nitori held out her hand. “I smelled a cucumber. It’s your being-alive tax for today.”

Well, I had no excuses there. I had brought a cucumber, just in case a kappa got mad at me. Legends said that a cucumber was the only way to appease them. This sounds dirty, but keep in mind that I am speaking literally. They enjoy the vegetable known as the cucumber, for whatever reason. Japan is weird.

Suddenly, inspiration flooded over me. I smiled, and said, “All right, give me a second.” I opened up my backpack, in which I had brought the Necronomicon in case things got ugly, but _also_ the cucumber. It was fresh, washed, and everything. You know, the whole nine yards. Joke.

“Fetch!” I shouted as I threw the cucumber towards the Bazaar as far as I could with my slightly magically-augmented strength. This, as it turned out, was _very_ far. Much farther than I had intended.

Nitori glared at me. “Next time we meet, I’m killing you,” she said before she flew off at top speed to catch the vegetable before it landed.

Um, well… shit?


	5. Magic is like an onion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Magic shenanigans.

“Dude, you’re drawing it wrong. Again.” Marisa smacked my hand. “Bad.”

I looked down at the paper on my desk. It was covered in half-finished magical circles, many of which were pentagrams. Actually, so was the floor of my room. And there were a few on the walls. Some of them weren’t recognizable as such thanks to hand cramps or similar, but most of them looked almost like perfect circles to me. I sighed, and turned my chair around.

“Marisa,” I said, “this isn’t working.”

Marisa nodded far more seriously than I’d ever seen before. “You might be right. I’m not really good at teaching this.” Marisa snatched a paper from my desk, and began writing on it. She put it down, and allowed me to look at it.

She’d drawn a quite large magical circle, with various complicated parts. I couldn’t even tell its purpose.

“Okay, trace this.” Marisa took a piece of… tracing paper… out of her hat… and put it down on the paper.

“Why?”

“We need to make sure you’re capable of making magical circles like this. Because if you aren’t, I might need to completely rethink how magic works for other people.” Marisa rubbed her brow. “Jeez, though. I can _sense_ the magic in you. It’s just not working, dammit!”

I traced the circle, to the best of my ability, and handed the paper to Marisa. “Here,” I said as I handed it to her.

Marisa nodded, and concentrated. I could feel her magical power flowing into the sheet…

And then it set itself on fire.

******************

“Um…” Ayano laughed awkwardly. “Your magic lessons aren’t going well, I take it?”

I shook my head. “No… not really.”

Ayano gave me a look of pity.

As you may or may not have guessed, Marisa had started coming over far more regularly. Initially, just to visit Ayano and steal the Tsukimori’s booze. Then she started coming over for lunch biweekly. Then weekly. Then she, out of the blue, decided I needed to be having magic lessons from somebody. Probably since I hadn’t made much progress with the Necronomicon, as it was filled with instructions for spells, or, to put it another way, instructions I was incapable of following, or couldn’t entirely understand. And, because of my lack of money, she started teaching me herself. These lessons generally started after dinner, at maybe six, and ended somewhere around eight o’clock. The issue? Well, I don’t seem to use magic the same way Marisa does.

The first lessons worked fine. We practiced channeling magic into things. That was easy. We tried danmaku-clearing, very basic bombs if you will. Those just involve irradiating the air around you with as much of your magic as you possibly can. They’re not very effective, as they don’t clear much and tire you out quickly, but it’s incredibly good practice for advanced channeling. The issues began once we tried making things to channel into.

Marisa draws pentagrams for her magic, and when I channel into them, it works _fine_ , if a bit strangely. That’s because my inner magic is moon-elemental, while Marisa’s is sun-elemental. Sun and moon magic don’t work together well. Even when channeling it through a different element, that stays constant. But it’s not impossible, nor really that hard, to use moon magic on a sun circle, so _that_ was fine.

The more noticeable problems began when I tried drawing magic circles, though, because I always did one of two things: drew them wrong, or made ones that didn’t work. My pentagrams were incredibly unstable, and tended to catch fire or explode. I tried hexagrams, too, which are a more magically stable shape, and those didn’t really work either. They exploded less than the pentagrams, but they caught fire more.

I sighed, apparently catching Ayano’s attention.

“Ah, do you want some tea?” Ayano asked, standing up from the living room table. “I was making some earlier. This year’s harvest has been particularly good so far.”

“Oh, that’d be wonderful.”

But still, that didn’t explain how even non-elemental magic circles were failing. According to Marisa, that was very unusual. Though, perhaps she wasn’t the best person to ask. She _was_ taught by Mima, one of the best magicians around, according to canon, probably maybe possibly probably until ZUN denies it.

******************

I returned to my room shortly after my quick tea break. For the record? Gensokyan green tea is amazing. Beyond belief. Compared to normal green tea, anyways.

I looked down at the papers on the desk. I’d bought the thing recently, figuring it’d be a good thing to have. My furniture collection was now at a futon _and_ a desk, plus a _chair_! Pretty damn good. But, of course…

I picked up a paper of pentagrams and flipped it over to use the other side. I’d had an idea. Not magic-related, but…

I started writing. For old times’ sake. I had my Pocket PC, sure, but my first piece of writing, ever, had been a Star Wars fanfiction I wrote with crayons when I was three. So… it was more _really_ old times’ sake, but still, it was for old time’s sake. Though now I was using a fountain pen rather than a crayon because nobody in Gensokyo had bothered to invent pencils or crayons yet. I’d have to pitch the idea to some wax seller.

Anyways, the piece was a simple concept. Protagonist meets strange girl, realizes everything is within someone else’s dream, including himself _and_ the strange girl, existential bullshit, et cetera. I’d titled it Melancholia. At the very least, it was… creative? It needed refinement.

I looked down at the page, and realized I’d written the whole thing in English. So, nobody would be able to read it except maybe Ayano… no, wait, I wrote the word ‘existential’ down one time, so that meant _nobody_. Not to mention my writing was _tiny_. I left the thing on the table, and went and opened my closet.

It was filled with mostly farm-safe outfits, the yukata Ayano had bought me earlier, and my outside world clothes.  That is, the ones I’d come here with. A black t-shirt, a black hoodie, black track pants… well, they were monochrome, but damn comfortable. Plus, they got me in the right mood for writing. I changed into those, and grabbed the last thing that was hanging there that was left from the outside world. It was a USB on a lanyard. It was a simple tool, but one that had served me well for the good part of 7 years. It made me feel more comfortable.

And then I got back to writing. I took a new page, and wrote down a new idea. It was about a girl who turned into an eldritch abomination at night- wait.

A new one. This one was far more promising, about all sorts of things, a grand crossover between all genres with established reasons in each- actually, I could-

My hand began moving faster and faster and faster as I continued writing. My writing grew slightly messier, and then it broke into a language I’d never written before. Each letter was runic and angular, and simple. They were regular, beautiful, and they seemed… right?

After a few lines of these, my conscious caught up with my subconscious and I looked down at the page. Again, the feeling of these runes was just… right. Something about them felt correct. And make no mistake, I couldn’t read them, really, but… I could feel them. Their meaning was there, but it wasn’t my mind that was reading them. I started writing more, but was interrupted when I heard a knock on the front door downstairs.

******************

“Yes?” I asked sleepily as I opened it, revealing the midnight sky outside. Much to my surprise, Marisa was standing on the front steps.

“I figured it out! I should’ve asked Alice about her methods earlier and…” Marisa took a step back. “Will? You okay?”

“Yeah?” I replied. “I’m feeling fine. Just slipped into my outside world clothes earlier.”

“No, that’s not the strange thing. I’ve seen far stranger outfits in my time. Heck, I’m wearing one of them.” Marisa stared at me, seemingly looking for something. “But, Will, you… how do I put this? You’re glowing.”

I looked down at myself, and realized I was, in fact, surrounded by a lilac aura of some sort. “Oh, my…” I reached up and felt my hair, and realized it was flowing as if some invisible wind were lightly blowing upon it.

Marisa laughed. “So, any magical developments since I left?”

“No, but I wrote this, and it’s kind of magic-looking.” I reached into the pocket of the hoodie, and pulled out the paper I’d been writing on. “Look.”

Marisa stared at the runes on the page. “Oh.” Marisa handed it back. “Um, I don’t know what to say now, since it looks like you figured it out… but, turns 0ut that Alice doesn’t use magic circles, and Patchouli uses physical objects like crystals, mostly, to channel, so I figured the circle part was more, just, find-your-thing, but…” Marisa chuckled awkwardly, and tore the page in half. I stopped glowing.

“Thanks, I guess.” I yawned.

“Yeah…” Marisa fidgeted nervously for a moment.

“Um, I probably need to sleep now, so…?”

“Ah!” Marisa nodded. “Yeah, have fun, um…” She sighed, and left.

******************

And, when I finally fell asleep again, I found myself in a completely empty void, facing myself.

“Pal, you got issues, huh?” I… they? Me? He scratched his ear. “I’d have used this chance _properly_ by now. I’d have been flying, shooting, _and_ I’d be dating some big Gensokyan personality, language barriers be damned.”

“Ah, crap.” I looked at the dream-abyss around me. It was blissfully empty, though I seemed to be standing on something. “I’m talking to my dream-self now. Great. So, what _sort_ are you? A manifestation of my subconscious? Probably too cliché for me, I wouldn’t do that… An alternate personality or mysterious dark side? That’d be self-insert-like… so maybe?”

“Ah, well, I won’t entirely deny the dark side part, but…” The dream-me chuckled. “I’m really just you. Not an alternate personality. I’m both you and _not_. I’ve other no way to explain it, kid. But it’ll make more sense if you look at my outfit here.”

I looked at the outfit, as I was told. They were wearing a black hoodie over a black t-shirt and track pants, with a lanyard around their neck. A red USB was attached to this lanyard, and it was labelled ‘16GB’. I already knew what exactly it was. Hell, I was _wearing_ it. The drive, when plugged in, was digitally labelled ‘YUKKURI’ and it held approximately a whole gigabyte of my life’s work. Writing, mostly original, but a small amount of fanfiction. However, this one was slightly more worn.

Basically, it was my outside world outfit, perfectly done. Except this me looked different. His hair was longer. A lot longer. It fell down all the way to his waist, and he slouched more than I did. There was something about him…

“Oh.” I came to a sudden conclusion. “You’re what I’d have become if I hadn’t gone to Gensokyo.”

“Yeah, sure. Pretty much, anyways. I’m the you outside, you’re the me in Gensokyo. Different, but the same. We exist in the same time, but different worlds. Like that one Touhou fangame, uh… Concealed the Conclusion’s Reimu, or sleeping Maribel. Something like that.” I… they? Well, whatever they were, they laughed, and it was most certainly _my_ laugh, because it sounded _super_ evil. Imagine your typical deep-voiced movie villain, and you’re halfway there. “Anyways, sorry about this whole setup. It must’ve been sort of a shock. But yeah, a lot’s happened in the outside world.”

“Like… what?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer.

“Touhou 16 got announced, and- Oh, I bet you’re confused about which one’s you. That’s kind of sad. Well, you go by Bill, so I’m Will, MS Word spellchecker be damned.” He smirked. “Oh, by the way, we’ve gotten the name in, but nothing else. It’s called Wizarding Re-Conference of Ages. _Just in case you’re wondering_.”

Not sure how that was relevant, I moved on. “So,” I began, “that means you’re the one writing this all. The brains behind the William Ungerstein Fmerigo fanfics? I mean, this is a self-insert, so there’s got to be a me writing this.”

“No, no… pal, you’re going about this all wrong.” Will made a spinning gesture with his hand and began to speak, but stopped himself midway into the first syllable. He thought for a moment. “Okay, look. It’s self-insert, but it doesn’t mean there’s a living writer in-universe per se. It’s from your perspective. First-person, that is to say.”

“So you’re saying…”

“Yeah, you’re writing it as you go, or possibly in the future. The tense isn’t exactly specific enough most of the time for me to tell which. Either with magic or the Mini-PC bullshit, which is a throwaway plot point, by the way.” Will shrugged. “Basically, what we’ve got here is a nice case of something completely independent of time.”

“Well, that’s cool, but could you maybe Pratchett the heck out of here? This plot device has gone on long enough.” I sighed. “Book 5 of the Dresden Files, I think. Dead Beat, was it? Lasciel appears in MC’s dream, offers him power and riches, he says no for the five hundredth time because he’s _such_ a nice guy?”

“Well, _I_ thought you’d like it…” Will pouted. “I’ll make it more entertaining next time. Maybe I’ll pull a Lasciel _again_ , turn female and summon a hot spring? I could do that. You’d probably enjoy it more.”

I grimaced. I _absolutely_ didn’t want to see that. Female me would be… probably disgusting and/or terrifying. Or just tired-looking, which wouldn’t be as bad, but still would be weird and almost certainly awkward to a certain extent. “No, please don’t,” I told this strange individual that was masquerading as me.

“Someone offers you that, and you _decline_ it?” Will sighed and shook his head. “There’s a reason we’re separate people. But whatever, it’s my dream, I can do what I want.”

“Um? _Your_ dream? It’s very definitely mine.”

“I mean, I guess that’s possible too. But it’d be stupid. But, anyways, kid.” Will pointed at me. “Get off your ass and forget about this anti-canon-defilement thing. It’s useless. No upsides to it.”

“What?”

“Marisa totally wants you.” Will let his arm fall back down to his side. “Did you _see_ how she was acting when she left? Exposing her neck and wrists more than usual, the whole shyness thing… classic behavior of a love-struck maiden.”

“Well, did _you_ see how she was acting?”

“Well, no, technically, but that’s beside the point. I’m just…” Will bit his lip. “Dammit, it’s just…” he sighed. “Look, I’m more partial to Raiko myself, but the point remains that she’s falling for you. Slowly, but surely. You’ll have to deal with that one way or another.”

“I see no proof,” I replied matter-of-factly. After all, anything like that was _completely_ ridiculous, not to mention a nuisance to read about in any self-insert. It was simply people living out their fantasies, indulging themselves, and it was _awful_. There were very few cases where I could accept anything of the sort happening, and they were very, very specific. My life was not one of them. And if I was the one writing it, as Will had suggested, it wouldn’t happen at all, because, simply enough, I wouldn’t write that. If anything, I’d ship myself with Raiko. Like he said.

“I see lots of proof myself,” Will said arrogantly. “See, one of us has a girlfriend, and the other doesn’t. Oh, hey, I just realized I have a girlfriend! By process of elimination…” Will smiled. “You don’t.”

“I didn’t have one when I left.”

“I got one.”

“No, that makes no sense. I didn’t even _know_ anybody that would…”

Will groaned. “Ugh, you’re a pain in the ass… you didn’t think Ella would ever come back to Switzerland? I took the initiative.”

“That… happened _before_ I left to Gensokyo. And we just got coffee and chatted about old times for a bit before she left. And then we didn’t talk again for a month.”

“Shit!” Will swore, for… some reason? “Well, congrats! Did you know parallel universes exist? Now you do, because you’re over-inquisitive and annoying!”

“Jeez, no need to take it so hard…” I sighed. This was fun and all, talking to myself, but it was, in the end, a waste of time.

“Oh, actually!” Will perked up suddenly. “I’ve got to go. Duty calls.”

“You need to take a dump?”

“No, stupid. I’ve got to wake up, and so do you. Just remember, lose your common sense. It isn’t worth it.” Will vanished, leaving behind only the echoes of a Touhou tune that, much to my surprise, I couldn’t name, though it sounded somewhat familiar. Perhaps it was a new Touhou 16 one with a similar-sounding melody to one I knew? I had no way to tell.

“That was… informative,” I said to nobody in particular. And then I heard… something strange.

******************

I awoke and found myself upright. That was the first odd part.

The second odd part was that I was floating three feet above the floor the center of my room, the walls of which were covered in hundreds of thousands of runes, which were glowing a bright lilac. Ayano had opened the door, and she was watching in horror.

“Hmm?” I was now faced with a set of options. Figure out what was going on, or… actually, the other choice was irrelevant. I quickly looked over the runes.

The glow of them seemed to fade and then come back every second or two, allowing me to see that they were written in what seemed to be ink, thankfully not blood, and they seemed to have some meaning involving…

I quickly read over them, one after another.

 _‘enhance, enhance, become better, increase magical power, force linguistic override, enhance, seventh-order, draw upon life-force, enhance, astral entity #782 presiding over_ ’... it seemed like they were for some sort of advanced spell and wait, _draw upon life-force_?

I concentrated all of my energy upon the _draw upon life-force_ rune, causing it to burst into flames, breaking the spell.

******************

Marisa looked over my walls. Ayano had called her over, which made a lot of sense considering the magical nature of this emergency. An expert eye was needed. And, well…

Marisa scratched her head. “You can _read_ this? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Well, I don’t know…” I replied. “It’s not entirely like reading. I know what they mean, but it’s more of a feeling than a mental thing.”

“Ah. So it’s your font of magic, then. Like my circles…” Marisa poked one rune. “What does this one say?”

“Um, _ritual_ , unless I’m mistaken. Which I’m honestly not sure I can physically be about these.”

“This one?” Marisa pointed towards another.

“ _Youkai._ In the context of repelling, judging from the last three.”

“This?”

“ _Force override on section 5F of stigma._ Whatever that means.”

“Ah, so the meanings can be longer. The more complex ones seem to have more simple meanings, oddly…” Marisa sighed exasperatedly. “Jeez, there’s _too many_ of them! I can’t figure it out… If I could read it myself, maybe…” Marisa snapped her fingers. “That’s it. I’ll borrow the tengu’s camera, take pictures of these walls, or maybe just write these down, have you tell me what the most common things mean, and I’ll work it out from there. Oh, and what was the smudged out one?”

“Oh, that one. I think it was…” I grabbed my brush from the table and drew it in. It was a simple thing, only a single line bent around on itself. Like the thing with the snake eating its own tail… what was that called? Well, whatever it was… “It means _draw upon life-force_. Make of that what you will.”

“Ah!” Marisa came to some sort of conclusion. “These symbols are like the radicals on my magical circles! So, assuming you’re using a square writing space, it’s just a slightly more space-efficient way of… oh, wow, okay.” She turned back to me. “So, how about we start getting to the more advanced magic? You’ve clearly got the basics down, in sort of a weird way.”

“Oh, sure.”

“Cool!” Marisa stopped for a moment. “But let me copy this all down before you clean your walls.”

And so, I slept on the couch for the rest of that night.

Kind of anti-climactic.


	6. My Life as a Stage 3 Boss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> magic magic magic whee  
> i don't know how to write a summary  
> -A poem by William Ungerstein Fmerigo

 “All right, Will, now just make sure your arm’s still steady…” Marisa gripped her elemental reactor tightly. The mini-Hakkero was almost guaranteed to have an incredibly destructive output, just due to how it worked, so for her, it was incredibly important. “This here is the important part. Keep your energy flowing at a steady pace _outwards,_ and keep it stable.”

I nodded, held my arm out forwards, and followed her instructions. A beam of my concentrated energy, a light lilac in color, fired off at the training dummy. It began emitting smoke as the beam charred it slightly.

Marisa nodded approvingly. “Not bad. Anyways, that’s how I usually shoot when I’m not using any spellcard in particular. Some chose to release it in bursts, or give up fine control for just spewing bullets out _everywhere_ … but I don’t approve of that, honestly. Oh, but speaking of different methods, Master Spark is just a natural extension of my normal shots. I force the Hakkero’s magic output to maximum and expel as much as I possibly can out from every orifice! That makes a _lot_ of bullets from the fallout, unsurprisingly. Ah, but don’t try mimicking it! It’s _my_ card.”

“Well, technically it’s Yuuka’s, but I wasn’t planning on it, honestly.” I sighed. “I don’t know about the focused shot thing, though, it doesn’t really suit me.”

Marisa shrugged. “As long as you’re not puking out rainbows all over, I’m good with whatever. But keep in mind your first tome will rub off on your style. It’s just how magic works. My first one was a tome for magic fireworks, super flashy stuff with no real use in combat. But I sure as _heck_ made it work. Speaking of which, how do _you_ think you’re supposed to shoot?”

“Ah, well…” With my eyes closed, I concentrated my energy into the air around me this time, and then sent it firing forward. It seemed the natural thing to do.

“Ooh, danmaku on a delay! Interesting. I’ve never seen anything entirely like that before, though Youmu did something similar with her options, once. It’s kind of weird, but it might have some kind of combat advantages! I’d love to see what you can do with it.”

I opened my eyes, and found that the danmaku I had been creating was in the shape of various runes. It stayed behind where it was created for a little bit, before firing forward in a straight line. It was…

“Boring,” I spoke. “Stupid, boring, and not effective enough.” The training dummy was barely recoiling.

“I don’t know, um, practice? Practice makes perfect! Yeah! Also, I wanna see your spellcards. Just to give them the good ol’ Marisa run-down.”

I shrugged, and pulled the things out of my pocket. I’d done them up in two sets of five, not unlike the spellcards in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody. That and Hisoutensoku were the Touhou games I was most familiar with, oddly enough, so I’d modeled my cards after them.

“Ah, sets of five? That takes me back…” Marisa looked over them, and nodded. “But, hey, congrats! You could beat Cirno now! Probably.”

“Yeah, you got beaten once by her, so I wouldn’t underestimate her.”

“That never happened.” Marisa glanced over the second set, still grimacing from the sheer force of the truth. “Hmm, yeah! I’d say you’re about on par with Meiling. I doubt you’d get much further, though.”

Ouch. That kind of hit home. The bar that I couldn’t pass in most Touhou games on Normal mode was Stage 3 exactly, or 4 after Mountain of Faith. Rarely, I’d do well enough to win without continues. On the other hand, anything before Touhou 10? Nope. I was _always_ done in by Stage 3. On Embodiment of Scarlet Devil specifically? That meant Meiling.

Marisa chuckled. “Seems like I got you in a weak point there. Got something against Meiling?”

“Heavens no, I couldn’t hold _anything_ against those legs, but I’m kind of disappointed in myself.”

“…legs?” Marisa raised an eyebrow. “Actually, more importantly, why’re you disappointed?”

“Ah, that’s kind of complicated.” I really didn’t want to bring the fourth wall into this any more than I already had.

“Well, on the bright side, you’re strong enough to enter the Incident Conspirator Number 3 Club! Which doesn’t exist, but it could.” Marisa gave me a cocky smile. “In celebration, I’ll get you a hat or other head decoration.”

Ah. I was now in the Stage 3 Club. Yay…? Not great, but I’d take that and a hat over nothing absolutely any day. “Awesome,” I said. “I’ll be a real 2hu.”

“What the heck’s a 2hu?”

“Never mind.”

Marisa clicked her tongue. “Say, Will! You look like you’re lacking motivation. You okay?”

“Ah, yeah, just… sort of disappointed in myself, like I said. I’ve made… well, not nearly enough progress, and it’s been _six months_ since I first got here.”

Marisa smiled. Evidently, her plan was starting to come together. “Have you ever seen Gensokyo from above?”

******************

“Hold on tight, bub!” Marisa shouted as she increased her already breakneck speed to what was questionably supersonic.

I, while attempting to not fall off, had put my arms around Marisa’s waist, quite tightly. Evidently, she had planned this as well, and sort of smirked back at me before diving into a nearby cloud, laughing her head off. It was… odd, to say the least. But I couldn’t see anything, since she was going too fast.

“Almost there,” Marisa said over her shoulder, which was a bad idea on a supersonic broom, evidently, as in _just_ the time she’d been looking away, the world had changed. Two fewer fairies now resided here in this world. I shed a single tear for their sacrifice to queen and country.

Well, no I didn’t. But you get the point, they died.

And, before long, Marisa came to a stopping point above the Forest of Magic, quite close to the Misty Lake, actually. And… well, it was truly breathtaking. As much as I try to make myself seem cool in my memories, I _know_ I had my mouth hanging open, because _oh my god_.

The Misty Lake reflected light from the sun in very interesting ways, due to the mist, and it made the beams of sunlight shine in ways I’d never seen before. The sunset over the Forest was breathtaking and the plains were rippling in the wind and… it was impossible to truly describe.

“Cool, huh?” Marisa said. “I always like to come up here when I’m uninspired, and…  Love Sign ~ 「Master Spark」!”

“Wait, wha-” I was cut off as a massive beam shot into the sky, spewing out star danmaku everywhere that burst into even more sparkles as they travelled.

Marisa turned back and smiled at me, when another beam shot into the air from towards the Youkai Mountain. This one was a bright fiery orange, and I recognized it. Mega Flare. One of Utsuho’s cards.

“Oh, she wants to fight? I’ll show _her_ who can shoot the best lasers!” Marisa readied her Hakkero again, and shouted, “Magicannon「Final Spark」!” A beam perhaps five times the width of her Master Spark fired from her Hakkero, pushing the broom downwards. Marisa stood up on it, pushing it down farther, and readied another spell. Before she could do anything, though, an even larger orange beam fired out from the direction of the Kappa Valley.

“God dammit, she just…” Marisa smirked. “I’ll show her. Perversion ~ 「Never-Missing Master Spark」!” A small beam fired off at a very strange angle from the Mini-Hakkero, towards the source of the Mega Flares, before expanding into a monstrosity probably twice the size of Final Spark. Smoke rose from the direction the beam had fired towards, before a winged form shot up into the air at high speeds, a yellow trail shooting out danmaku behind it.

“Oh, shit, she’s angry…” Marisa laughed, and pulled out five more spellcards. “These’ll do it for sure. 「Blazing Star」!”

“Wait, Marisa!” I shouted. “I’m on here too!”

“Too late!” Marisa shouted back. She oriented herself on the broom like a skateboarder would their board, and aimed the Hakkero directly backwards. It fired out a beam comparable to Final Spark, and we shot forward at maybe three times the speed we’d been going at before directly at the figure, spewing out danmaku as we went.

The figure didn’t try to dodge. I mean, it was undoubtedly Utsuho. She wouldn’t. Instead, she began glowing.

“Marisa, watch out! She’s going to-”

“「ABYSS NOVA」!” Utsuho shouted just as we drew near, before everything burst into a light brighter than the sun.

******************

Marisa laughed as she lay on the grass of the plains that were the neutral territory of Gensokyo. In between the Forest of Magic, the Scarlet Devil Mansion, the Human Village, basically anywhere could be accessed from here in one way or another.

“Jeez, I thought I’d die,” I griped as Marisa rolled around in the grass, still laughing.

“Wasn’t it fun, though?” Marisa burst into laughter again as soon as she was done speaking. It was incredible that she had enough air in her lungs to do that.

“I mean…” I smiled. “I never thought I’d see Abyss Nova up close.”

“I’ve never _seen_ the darn thing before, myself!” Marisa giggled. “It’s so cool! Killing _everything_ that can’t block! Brilliant! No way it’s allowed in that form in official duels, but for informal ones? Oh my gods it’s glorious!”

“Well, Never-Missing Master Spark is totally unfair. It aims at whatever you choose, makes sure it’s in the targeting beam, and _then_ fires? That’s insane!”

“Not allowed in official duels, either! But you’re right, Will. I should totally make it _harder_ to dodge!” Marisa burst out laughing again. “Patchy would… she’d be like, ‘Oh, Marisa, I’m going to shoot a hundred thousand fireballs,’ and I’ll be like ‘NOPE’! And then she’ll explode! BOOM!” Marisa made a sort of exploding motion with her hands, like she was emulating a mushroom cloud. And then she started having a giggling fit again.

I let her laugh for a while. Eventually, she managed to calm down, but it took her maybe ten minutes. In the meantime, I sat next to the grass she was rolling in, and watched the sky. Fairies were flying over us, sometimes plotting, and occasionally a youkai would fly over and scare them off, before waving to Marisa, who would wave back, give me some sort of comedic gossip on the aforementioned youkai, and start laughing again.

She was having fun, clearly. And it was frankly contagious.

“Hey, William?” she asked, after she’d stopped laughing for a bit. “How many friends do you think I have?”

“Lots. There’s the youkai that flew over, and then there’s Reimu, Sanae, Sakuya, Youmu… I can name plenty. Even Ran, Yukari, Flandre to a certain extent…”

“Ooh, nice.” Marisa chuckled. “You know some big names for a newcomer.”

“I try.” Or I could tell her I was an avid fan of games starring her. That wouldn’t go over as well, I figured, so I held that little tidbit of information back.

“But, actually, you’d be wrong there,” Marisa replied. “I’ve got myself thousands of acquaintances and colleagues. As far as friends go, I sometimes drink with Reimu and Suika, maybe play with Flandre if it’s a cloudy day, but that’s about it. I spend _lots_ of time on my magic, getting stronger, but I think I’ve gotten almost as good as I can even get as a human. So it’s nice to have another human to talk to, who’s also interested in magic…”

“…you mean me, don’t you?”

“Yeah, _stupid_.” Marisa shoved my shoulder playfully. “You. I want to duel sometime, too, once you get better at magic. Spellcard duels are so much fun…! But I’d beat you _every time_ now. I want you to be able to be strong enough, and… well, yeah. I’m just an ordinary magician that wants to have fun.”

There was silence for a moment as I tried to think of a way to respond. But Marisa spoke again, before I could come up with anything.

“You know, I had a teacher once. She was so wonderful, I thought, and then when I finally surpassed her, I didn’t know what to think. When she said, ‘I’ve nothing left to teach you,’ and just _vanished_ , it was a terrible experience for me. But…” She smiled. “I feel like every day now, I’m getting closer to her. Not literally, but in spirit, I guess? Oh, in spirit, that’s a good pun…”

“Mima?” I asked. “That’s not canon, is it?”

“You know her?” Marisa asked, startled. “You know Mistress Mima?”

“Not personally, but…  well, I’d say I’ve heard of her at a bar or something, but, really, we both know that’s not true. I can’t explain it, though. Sorry.” I scratched my head. “It’d make no sense if I did.”

Marisa sighed, but her frown quickly gave way to a smile. “A man of mystery, huh?” She slapped me on the back. “Good one! You’ll get _all_ the girls that way! Anyways, we should head back soon, probably. Wanna take another ride on the Blazing Star?”

“Please, no.”

“You _know_ you want to.”

“…okay, well, I totally do, but…”

******************

The ride home to the Human Village was very short and action-packed. Probably because we were travelling at speeds upwards of 240 MPH, at my estimation. And, well, I can say with perfect confidence that, as soon as I arrived back, I went to my room and promptly passed out. It had been a long day. I’d travelled at speeds that I’d never even thought possible before, too.

I mean, that’s the downside to being Marisa’s de-facto apprentice. You’re going to experience a lot of new things, whether you want to or not.

Unfortunately, sleep wouldn’t be much more restful than my daytime escapades.

******************

Because, apparently, my dream-self had decided to _actually_ generate a hot spring, as they’d promised. And that meant…

“Hello there,” a distinctly feminine voice said. “I did promise I’d pull a Lasciel.”

“Kill yourself,” I replied flatly.

“That’s no way to treat a lady,” said the horrifying gender-bent version of myself that stepped into the hot spring, a towel around their chest. Speaking of which…

I looked down, and saw exactly what I thought I’d see. Hot spring smoke. The convenience of censors. Thank _god_. Having to move the story to an M rating would at least _halve_ my views once people realized the corvids and Jerry Seinfeld weren’t going to make an appearance, if you catch my drift.

After realizing that the very nature of the universe would keep this strictly SFW, I took a moment to glance over my dream-self’s chosen form. It wasn’t… hideous, I guess, but…

Well, okay, here’s the waifu rundown, since everyone probably wants it. Their face’s features were softer, they were shorter than me by a foot, had breasts that were… maybe a C, D cup… _maybe_? I couldn’t tell, as I’ve never used a bra before. (Never mind seen one, but that’s another story.) Their hair was longer, and they were noticeably a little bit chubbier than me. Nothing extreme, but maybe a centimeter or two of extra fat that I didn’t have. Odd. That didn’t seem like something I would do, were I omnipotent and creating a form for myself. I noted with some annoyance that they hadn’t changed the hips at all, probably just as a non-verbal way of calling mine ‘feminine’. Well, shame on them, because I wasn’t going to say _shit_. Interestingly, the eyes were equally as dead and tired as mine. Huh.

“I kind of thought that if you were to take a female form, you’d eliminate any physical imperfections, but your BMI actually seems healthy for a female human being,” I c0mmented. “Rather than the starvation look I hear is hip with the teens these days.”

Will grimaced. “Hey, look, some of us haven’t been getting a Gensokyan workout, okay?” he/she responded. “The farming’s good for your muscles, I hear. Shame you look _gross_ now that you’ve got them.” They started to giggle, which they were clearly unaccustomed to, as it sounded almost crow-like, at least before they realized that it did and stopped.

“…oh my god, you’re _really_ gonna go there?” I’m not going to make a detailed comment on their previous statement, as manservice is probably the _last_ thing anyone wants from this fic, but I would like to respectfully say that that statement is and was total bullshit. I hope. “Also, what should I call you now that you’ve undergone gender transition surgery?” I asked.

“You know I haven’t… but whatever, it doesn’t matter.” They rolled their eyes. “Really, though? Didn’t think you’d make a joke at the expense of trans people, but whatever. You can call me Lilly now. It has approximately the same amount of the letters L and I that the word William does. I think.”

“Well, I mean, I’m running out of ways to insult you. But okay, Lilly then. What the _hell_ do you want? Are you trying to seduce me or something? Because, I hate to break it to you, but we’re strictly PG-13 here at William Ungerstein Fmerigo’s fanfiction page.”

“Well, I mean, I would, but…” Lilly tossed the towel to the side, causing beams of very bright light and an overabundance of hot spring steam to obscure any potentially sensitive parts. “See, it doesn’t work. Like your-”

“OKAY, keep it family-friendly here, thanks.” I sighed. “So why is that?”

“Hell if I know. But you’ve forgotten your earlier question, which is…”

“Oh, right, what do you want from me?”

Lilly leaned up to my ear. “ _Marisa futanari fics~_ ” she whispered in a way I can only really describe as gleeful.

“I hate you so much right now, and thanks to you, I’m probably going to get an M rating now,” I responded matter-of-factly.

“Nah, talking about crunchy times using bizarre, previously unheard of euphemisms is okay in T rated fanfics. Just… not _having_ them. But in all seriousness, that’s not what I want, though any porn you’ve got would be appreciated. Nobody’s written _any_ good Touhou fanfics in the outside world recently, much less any M-rated ones. Or E, by AO3’s rating system.” Lilly leaned back, and reclined into her normal position. The beams of light and smoke moved in perfect sync with her, which was really unsettling, actually, like watching a fog monster just slide. It’s kind of hard to explain, but basically, it’s like if bees didn’t flap their wings and instead just hung there in the air. Okay? Okay. Moving on.

“Okay, I’ll make a note to write you porn, then, but what do you want? Stop dodging the question!”

“Right. Well, in short… you need to fall in love with Ayano or Tani, and fast, or you’ll end up dating a canon character. It’s inevitable, given the state the universe is in.” Then Lilly’s brow furrowed for a moment, and she thought. “Actually, no, maybe not. It could still end up as a harem unless you get married ASAP. Or, I mean, I guess you could-”

“Wait, the state the universe is in?”

“Ah, yeah, you might not have realized this yet, but, surprise!” Lilly waved her hands in the air. “This isn’t canon Gensokyo.”

“In case you missed it, stupid, that’s the title of the fic.”

“Well, yeah, but… okay, let me explain. I did my research after our last meeting. First, on the female form. Hence this. It would’ve had inaccurate internal organs if I hadn’t. What I’m saying here is that I have a girlfriend and you don’t.” Lilly gestured to herself, which was strange considering she was mostly talking about internal organs(?), but whatever. “Second, I did research on canon Gensokyo. Some things you told me last time didn’t line up with canon, and so I needed to confirm it. And third, I did research on our universe. And what’d you know, some things are certainly off from the reality we previously knew. So while you may be the narrator of the story, something else is controlling it. And it’s stressing out, because it knows that when people read Touhou fanfics, they want mystery! Adventure, romance! All that good stuff that canon Gensokyo cannot offer to them.”

“Oh, I get it. Kind of.”

“Right. So, basically, you’ve got…” Lilly counted out some numbers on her fingers. “Two weeks to avoid falling in love with any characters from canon. _Any_ of them. Alternate Win-Condition: fall in love with an OC to end the mission without the timer running out first.”

“I… only know two canon characters, and one hates me with every fiber of her being.”

“You’ll…” Lilly looked away. “You will get to know a _lot_ more, trust me.”

“You know more than you let on, don’t you…?”

Lilly shrugged. “Well, yeah.  I’ve had to live through this whole thing twice before. It wasn’t fun.”

“…reincarnation, you mean? Experience as being somebody else’s voice-inside-your-head?” It was a relatively safe guess, considering how Gensokyo’s cycle of life and death went. Probably.

“Yeah. Sort of. I mean, I’m like outside world you, but, like… the _spirit_ of that? It’s complicated.” Lilly frowned. “Anyways, bye? Someone’s waking you up, and I say _someone_ , but…” Lily sighed. “You’ll see. Oh, also, did you know that if I pushed my chest against your face right now, you would actually go blind?”

I glanced at the beams of light obscuring it. They were brighter than Abyss Nova had been. Thankfully. “Yeah, probably, but… _Why_?”

******************

And then I woke with a start. You can call me Snoop Dogg, because I’m woke as heck. Or something like that, I don’t know. How do you be hip with children? That joke doesn’t work. Moving on.

“Wake up…” an eerie voice called to me softly. “Wake up…”

“No,” I replied without even opening my eyes. “I’m going to go back to sleep, because I had a bad dream and I still want to be rested in the morning. Plus, it’s _dark_.”

“Do you think I can’t see that? Apprentice of the Ordinary Magician, awaken before the girl in the room next door wakes up first, dang it!” the voice whispered, yet somehow… loudly?

I opened my eyes, got out of my futon, grabbed a spellcard, and looked around. “Hey, where are you?” I asked.

“Outside the window, you moron!”

I turned, opened the window, and saw Alice Margatroid. The blonde one with the dolls and the blue dress, that is. That Alice Margatroid.

I bit my lip. “Um, you’re Alice.”

“Yes I am. I’m Alice Margatroid, as it happens.”

“You’re the doll lady.”

“Indeed.”

I stood silently for a moment, and then stowed my spellcard in my pocket. “Okay. Why do I need to wake up? Give me _one_ good reason.”

“Just… dammit, hurry up, get ready, then head to the Scarlet Devil Mansion. On foot is fine, we’ll have someone protect you from the shadows as you go in case any youkai are around. The gatekeeper will let you in.” Alice nodded. “All right, that’s it. I’ve got to go now, so… yeah.” Then she staggered off into the distance, and as I wondered how she was getting up to the second story window, I remembered flight existed, _then remembered she was walking_.

I looked, quite closely in fact, and realized she was wearing stilts made of dolls. Wobbly ones. She nearly tripped over the same pile of pebbles twice as I watched. In less than a minute.

I smiled in pity as I watched her go, wondering if it was okay for me to remind her that flight was a thing she could do.

******************

“And… okay, that’s big,” I said as I lay my eyes up0n the Scarlet Devil Mansion. It was, most certainly, a mansion. It was completely unlike any illustration could possibly convey. It was massive, and the moonlight shining down upon its towers made it look even larger by eliminating any significant amount of shade that could allow my sense of scale to adjust.

And then I noticed the crowd. There were flocks of what looked like bird youkai flying around the tallest point of the mansion, the clock tower, and the distinctive ball of darkness that was Rumia wasn’t far off either. It seemed that all of the youkai from around the SDM had gathered for whatever the heck was going on. Something was most certainly… _up_. Get it, because the clock tower is tall? No? Okay, moving on…

I stepped up to the gates, still totally in awe, and saw Meiling guarding the gates vigilantly, though she did look somewhat sleepy. Her portrayal in fanon as a useless, sleepy moron was clearly unfounded… nope, she was nodding off. Well, at least she was _trying_ not to.

“Um…” I paused, wondering what I should say. “Alice told me to come here, so here I am…”

Meiling shook off her sleepiness. “Finally,” she said. “Lady Patchouli told me a magician would come holding the Necronomicon to join her group tonight, and here you are… and now I can finally go to bed!” Meiling’s face lit up with a mix between relief and happiness. “Lady Patchouli told me I couldn’t sleep until _everyone_ had shown up, but it’s, what, one AM? She’s crazy, I tell you!”

I respectfully removed the thoughts of Patchouli-x-Meiling doujins past from my horrible, filthy mind, and asked, simply, “Can I go through the gate now?”

“Oh, whoops, forgot to open the darn thing…” Meiling gave the side of the gate a light push, causing it to swing open at quite the high speed. It was quite impressive, because those things looked _heavy_ , what with all the totally unnecessary cast-iron decorations. “Go ahead,” she continued. “Lady Patchouli is waiting in the entrance hall. She’ll explain everything. Also, tell her I did a good job, please.”

I nodded, and walked in, very wary of the fact that I could be eaten by youkai, vampire or otherwise, at literally any moment while inside the mansion.

******************

As I entered the entrance hall… foyer, maybe? I don’t know the exact word, but the area through the front door. Anyways, as I entered that, I have to say it’s just as impressive as the mansion itself. It looks like a slightly redder 17th century ballroom.

“Oh, finally.” Patchouli, who had been standing around under the chandelier (which was made of red glass and iron, by the way), floated over to me. “I was wondering when you’d finally show up.”

“Well, I’m human, so I had to get dressed and resist the urge not to sleep and all that…” I looked around the main hall again, and noticed the massive portrait of Remilia Scarlet that was hung upon the wall. It was... well, more flattering than most of her canon depictions.

“Human, huh…?” Patchouli smirked. “We’ll change that, soon. Anyways, follow me. We’re meeting in the library, but since you don’t know where that is, I’ll lead you myself.”

******************

Oh, you know how I said the SDM was impressive? The library totally dwarfs it. After being led down massive amounts of stairs, which was worrying considering where Flandre lives, Patchouli stopped at the second-to-last staircase until the basement (perks of spiral stairs: you can kind of see what’s beneath you), walked down the hallway a little bit, and shoved open a nearby set of two ornamental doors (red ones, unsurprisingly). As it happens, Patchouli’s Great Library is almost entirely underground, and that gives her a lot of room to work with.

I don’t know what else to say besides that it was massive. I don’t know if there’s any space-folding enchantments or anything applied to the walls or something, but it’s gigantic. It’s at least a hundred feet from the floor to the ceiling, and at least three times that much wide and long. And every single wall is lined with books, from the floor to the ceiling. Not to mention the bookshelves, which were just as tall and just as jam-packed with knowledge.

A small wooden table had been set up in the center of the library, which seemed to be the center of the meeting. I could see Cirno, Alice, Sakuya (who was eying Cirno with m _alice_ ), and someone I hadn’t seen before seated around the table. There were two empty seats, presumably for me and Patchouli. I looked around, and, sure enough, Koakuma was fluttering around the library sorting and shelving books. At least, if that was actually her name. In canon materials, she’s never given one. I’d have to ask about that.

“Take a seat, please.” Patchouli gestured to one of the chairs. I assumed that was where she wanted me to sit, so I walked over and sat down.

I have to say, Sakuya’s cold stares are truly horrifying. The minute I sat down, you see, she immediately began… sizing me up? It had to be something like that. I made a mental note to be polite to her, because it was likely that I’d die if I didn’t. She wasn’t typically portrayed as the friendliest, though apparently she’d started interacting with humans a little more after the Scarlet Mist incident. Thanks, Touhou guidebooks!

Patchouli cleared her throat rather loudly, catching my attention. “So, as you’re undoubtedly aware,” she began, “all of the people here are magicians, save for two. Alice, William, myself, and Melanie here, are all magicians, human or otherwise. Our powers vary in strength, of course, but at our core, we are all the same. And, to use a peculiar yet simple way of saying it, our magicianhood binds us. Recently, I heard word that some of the youkai were calling us magicians ‘just humans with magic’. Not full-fledged youkai, which is what we really are.”

I raised my hand, not wanting to interrupt Patchouli’s monologue in too much of an obtrusive way. She nodded, gesturing me to speak.

“I _am_ just a human with magic, though.” I sighed. “I’m not nearly strong enough to be a youkai magician yet.”

Patchouli sighed. “Is that all? Well, if Mel is strong enough to be a youkai magician, so are you. She was our proof-of-concept, essentially. And it proves that literally anyone with an ounce of magic in their veins can be one. I’ll have my familiar bring you a grimoire for the transformation sometime soon. And, that actually brings me rather nicely to my next point. We magicians tend to be independent, researching on our own. However, if we are to be strong enough to gather… garner? To _get_ the proper amount of respect, we need to share our research. If we cooperate, share our knowledge and spells, grow in power, and defeat Reimu and Marisa-”

“Excuse me, Lady Patchouli, but you _do_ realize what you’re saying, right?” Sakuya asked, her eyes practically burning a hole into Patchouli’s. “That would mean disaster.”

“Sakuya, the point isn’t to _kill_ them…” Patchouli shook her head disappointedly. “I intend to change the current trend of magicians being disrespected, specifically by giving the humans something to fear. After all, most youkai feed on fear. We magicians shouldn’t be an _exception_. But, as you know, anyone wishing to disrupt the power balance gets a beating from the Shrine Maiden of Paradise and the Ordinary Magician, who, to our cause, is basically a traitor. I wish for all of us to band together to stop them from making us magicians the laughingstock people think we are.”

“I’m sorry, Patchouli, but we _are_ relatively respected, among humans at least. It seems the youkai aren’t respecting us, judging from what you said, but we could easily just go and fight some of them and correct it without incurring the wrath of the incident solvers.” Alice waved her hand dismissively. “It’s just not a problem.”

“Ah. Well, you’ll likely be interested in what I heard in the Human Village, then. After I heard the youkai dismissing us, I decided to gather more information, and this was my result.” Patchouli reached into her robe, retrieved a paper, and began to read from it. “’Magicians? They’re _pathetic_! I could beat one in a fight. Hell, my 7-year-old _daughter_ could! They’re weaklings who spend all their time studying!’. That’s from a certain farmer, notorious in the village for being approximately as strong as a dead mouse.”

Oh my god. That was _Dead Mouse Jim_ they were talking about. I _knew_ him. Hell, we worked together on the farm occasionally. He would totally say something like that.

And, apparently the statement was hitting home. Alice and Melanie were becoming visibly angrier. Patchouli was even beginning to read somewhat louder, and I would bet a hundred bucks that it was from anger.

“Oh, and this, from a toddler I met at a candy shop.” Patchouli gave a mock smile, and began speaking with an incredibly high-pitched mock falsetto. “’Hah, magicians? They can’t fight! They’re poopy and _bad_ , and smelly too! They’re not scary at all, miss! They don’t even eat people!”

“That’s…” Alice took a deep breath. “That’s just a small section of the villagers.”

“No, actually, it isn’t. I surveyed approximately 100 villagers, selected randomly by a spell, to get a good sample size. 99 of them thought magicians weren’t a threat, nor were they strong, nor were they interesting, which is actually relatively indicative of the full population’s opinions.” Patchouli threw the paper she was reading from down onto the table with extreme prejudice. “Check that. It’s got my work on it.”

Alice and Melanie looked over at it angrily, while Sakuya looked over it with more curiosity than anything. I myself was just still confused why Cirno wasn’t talking. A quick glance, however, revealed that her mouth was quivering. She was exercising self-restraint, somehow. Perhaps she thought it would make her stronger. Thankful for her silence, whatever the reason, I looked down at the paper. And, wow, Patchouli was totally right.

She’d conducted the survey simply. Rate magicians from one to ten on threateningness, strength, and interestingness. The averages were 2.1, 1, and 3.2, respectively. If you rounded to the tenths place, anyways, but whatever. She’d also included a place for comments, and-

Oh, wow. They were _offensive_. Hell, even I was getting a little angry.

“…say, Patchouli?” Alice spoke with barely repressed anger and malice. “How soon can we declare war on the entirety of Gensokyo?”

“Very, very soon,” Patchouli said with a dark smile. And then she began to laugh, evilly. She wasn’t very good at it, actually, and it fell sort of flat. Instead of “MUAHAHAHAHAHA!”, it was more like “MUH…HA…HA?”

I sighed. “Um, I can do a pretty good evil laugh, Patchouli, so if you need help…”

“Oh, that’d be good.”

I took a deep breath, readied my lungs, and let out a horrendous evil laugh with all the deepness of my ordinary voice multiplied by a thousand. The windows probably rattled just from the resulting vibrations.

It was fun, I guess, but I think I scared Melanie a _little_ too much. Oh, and probably Cirno too. She sort of started screaming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it for this story arc. Tune in next time for the Re-Conference Arc, filled with goodies such as  
> -Magic Shenanigans  
> -Danmaku Fights  
> -Laser Beams  
> -CG Explosions  
> -More by-name references to TVTropes  
> -Ham Sandwich


	7. The Pre-Pre-Conference

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I get knifed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, here's the deal- turns out writing this takes a while, and also, each chapter has progressively gotten longer and longer. I have up to Chapter 11 written, but I'm not entirely comfortable with the state of some of it yet. So, I'll try to start posting again. Not regularly, but every now and then. I'll change the description of the story too, eventually, but, ehehe... no.

“Red Sign-「Doll Mira Ceti」!” Alice declared, activating her third spellcard of the duel.

Patchouli and her had been having a practice danmaku duel in the library, but it had gotten quite intense. A magical border of the Hakurei’s power had formed around them to keep damage in the area to a minimum, as a byproduct of the Spellcard Rules. I didn’t _entirely_ understand it, but it was basically the edge of the screen in a Touhou game except, well, more obviously tangible.

Patchouli drew her five elemental crystals closer to her (focus shot, I assume) and began to fire at a rapid pace while skillfully grazing Alice’s danmaku, a simple circular movement-restricting field that was simple to dodge coupled with large targeted shots from her dolls. Patchouli was showing off, though, quickly growing bored of just grazing five times around every single bullet.

“Alice, just get on with it,” Patchouli said. “I don’t want to expend any more power than I need to.”

“A real opponent wouldn’t give you that!” Alice shouted. “Now, for my finale! 「Phantom of the Grand Guignol」!” Alice’s next spellcard went off, vaporizing the remnants of Patchouli’s rapid-fire shots. 16 dolls surrounded Alice in a circle and began shooting both downwards and outwards, creating a perfectly geometric pattern around her which quickly began to overwhelm Patchouli, simply in terms of its complexity. However, one thing stuck out to me.

“…why do you guys never dodge up or down?” I asked politely. “Or shoot there, for that matter? There’s room in the barrier. Tons of it”

The danmaku battle rolled to a halt, and all the bullets vaporized at the barrier.

“…that’s…” Patchouli rubbed her brow. “A _really_ good question, actually. We generally don’t think like that, I guess?”

“Well, that makes no sense, you’re wasting space,” Alice pointed out. “Actually, why don’t we try this again?”

“Ah, sure?”

******************

Watching a danmaku battle, I can tell you, is like watching moving art. It may not really seem as such on a 2D screen, but once they stop thinking with planes… oh boy, it’s cool.

“3D -「Phantom of the Grand Guignol」!” Alice declared her spellcard, legally activating it within the duel. She summoned 64 of her dolls from seemingly nowhere, which all began shooting out a sphere of red-and-purple geometric death, while she herself shot large spherical bullets to keep Patchouli on her toes.

Patchouli quickly realized, after taking a couple of minor hits, that her normal 2D dodging strategies wouldn’t work. She did a quick evasive spin maneuver into a blind spot, and began firing all five of her crystals directly at Alice.

One thing I did immediately notice that was different from the games normally was that people generally moved at _three_ speeds. There were unfocused and focused, as usual, and then there was the speed dodge, which typically involved a rapid spin. It seemed to… maybe reduce the hitbox of bullets, but also increases speed by a _lot_ , judging from what I saw. Like running, walking, and dashing, sort of.

“Five Elements-「Philosopher’s Stone」!” Patchouli declared. She began a large circular evasive speed dodge between two safe areas that she could get through easily, and her crystals began firing large elemental bursts automatically.

However, their duel was cut off _yet again_ by Sakuya entering.

“My lady, I am here for the meeting. Apologies for my lateness,” she said politely, before glaring at me for even thinking a compliment about her.

“Ah, Sakuya.” Patchouli snapped her fingers, causing the duel border as well as her crystals to evaporate, as well as all the nearby bits of Alice’s danmaku. “We were just practicing danmaku. Now that you’re here, we’ve got more pairs, so I guess William could practice too.”

Sakuya looked eager at the chance, but I quickly spoke up. “Actually, I can’t fly,” I mentioned. “It’s kind of tricky for me.”

Alice raised an eyebrow. “But it’s easy. I mean, besides the fine control stuff. You just push your magical field in the direction you need to go.”

“I tend to shoot lasers whenever I try.” I demonstrated, by firing a laser from my head. “See?”

“A…” Patchouli smirked. “A useful skill, but we really do need to get you flying. Sakuya? You’ve got an opportunity to teach someone.”

Oh no.

******************

“The meetings are a little abrupt, no?” Sakuya asked as we walked through the SDM’s gardens, looking for a good spot with fewer plants for my lasers to set afire.

“Ah, well, they were doing that when I got here… I just kind of watched.” I shrugged. “I think I’ve got the general idea, though.”

“Clearly, though, not the idea of flying.” Sakuya nodded, seemingly content with the area we were in. Then she pulled a knife from some sort of holster strapped to her thigh, which I then noticed.

“You like knives, huh…?” I commented as she gave it a cursory glance. It was a damn good dagger if I’d ever seen one. The hilt was grey, and its blade was thin and perfect for slicing.

Her glance then turned to me. “Yes, in fact, I do. They are both cutlery and a weapon, with the precision of the former and power of the latter.”

“Ah.” I actually did have a little experience with knives. Believe it or not, knives were somewhat of a shared family hobby, back in the outside world. We had everything from Japanese models for cooking to German models for cutting… food, of course. They liked to cook, I liked the knives.

I wonder how they were all getting on without me.

“Ever try German steel?” I asked Sakuya. “The stuff’s good. Some of the best in the world.”

Sakuya sighed. “Unfortunately, even back when I was in the outside world, I did not have that pleasure. The process of getting it to France was enraging despite the nation’s nearness, so I simply had it redirected to a closer friend in impatience. Clearly,” she said as she slotted the knife back into its holster, “that was a poor choice, since now, I cannot get it by _any_ means.”

“Huh. Used to live in France?” I noticed that the few shrubs around us had been cut back a bit. She’d apparently stopped time to do this in the middle of a conversation. That was kind of rude, but I didn’t want to comment, since I’d get cut myself. “Recently, they’ve begun producing some pretty decent military knives. Some new design, I think.”

“M-Military knives…” I could see Sakuya’s eyes gleaming, practically, from just the thought. “They use knives in the military now… incredible. This is widespread, right?”

“Yeah, standard gear since World War One as far as I’m aware… When did you guys leave the outside world, exactly?” I asked, kind of curious.

“Oh, it was the 1700s. Good times. What year is it now, outside? Is there still an outside after this World War thing?” Sakuya asked. “Time passes somewhat differently in Gensokyo sometimes…”

“Oh, yeah, it was 2017 when I left, and World Wars One and Two passed without many problems besides the death of millions.” I shrugged. “Why’d you ask?”

“That explains so much…” Sakuya nodded. “Incredible. By now, science has to have _finally_ found a way to crack the secrets of the molecule.”

“Okay, well, if you wanna know, even molecules are made up of these things called atoms, which are made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons, the third of which might not exist because of this whole other thing, but it _does_ exist sometimes when people look at it…” I attempted to sum up my knowledge of particle physics, and failed miserably. I chuckled awkwardly. “Basically, it’s complicated.”

“Ah…” Sakuya frowned. “I see you aren’t the most well-versed in that. Anyhow, let’s get to flying, shall we? Try redirecting your energy downwards, as Patchouli suggested, for liftoff.”

I tried directing it downward, and was met with no luck besides a single teardrop-shaped bullet manifesting out of my eyes when I looked down. There are more comfortable things in the world than danmaku leaking from your eyes, trust me.

“I see.” Sakuya sighed.

“So it’s a bust?” I blinked the lingering magic particles out of my eyes.

“No.” Sakuya floated up into the air slightly, herself. “I’ll tell you what _I_ do, rather than what Patchouli does. You seem to have larger amounts of pure magic in there than she does, so it’s not surprising you can’t keep yourself from manifesting bullets. So I’ll teach you the magic-free option.”

“Wait, more pure magic than Patchouli?”

“Well, it’s a tradeoff of sorts. You two are roughly even as far as potential is concerned, at least as far as my experience can tell me. She has more elemental variety and can cast five spells simultaneously. You could easily outpower one of her spells without using one of your own if you were at your full potential, but all five? I doubt it. Now, back on topic.”

“Oh, sorry.”

Sakuya nodded, and dropped back to the ground. “The best way, in my experience, is to believe. Think about flying as if someone else were doing it. Flex a muscle you don’t have, in a way, and make it real.” Sakuya frowned. “Actually, that makes no sense.”

Well, it made enough sense, so I gave it a try. Imagine someone similar to myself flying, imagine what they’d do, and then copy it. I did so, and was met with no locomotion in an upwards direction.

Sakuya shrugged. “Well, if at first you don’t succeed…”

_BWOOMCKLIKILKCMOOWB_

“Just try, try again,” Sakuya finished as she dropped me from far above the Scarlet Devil Mansion, finally unfreezing time.

I fell for about a half second before I realized what was happening.

God dammit. You can call me Schrödinger’s Bakeneko, because I’m not gonna be dead unless someone checks too late. Which is a ‘joke’. Funny that all I can do when _falling to my death_ is joke.

As I fell, and felt my life run before my eyes, I let a single tear fall.

“The TVTropes ‘gag’ wasn’t _supposed_ to be a joke, though, just a non-sequitur …” I muttered as I fell to the ground and died and

******************

“So, how many times am I gonna have to save your stupid ass?” Will asked me as I hung suspended in the dream-Abyss, this time decorated by the beautifully trimmed shrubbery I was about to fall into as well as a small amount of land stolen from the SDM.

“Jeez, you again,” I said. “I’m going to die, so can you leave me alone?”

“I never died when _I_ was learning to fly. I just _did_ it, with help from nobody but my own power and maybe a magic hoodie.” Will grimaced. “But _no_ , you just _have_ to make this harder on me.”

“Really don’t care, sorry! Kind of trying to fly here so I don’t get my spine crushed!” I attempted to flex that ‘mental muscle’ Sakuya had been talking about, and experienced no results.

“She won’t catch you, the bitch.” Will sighed. “She hates your guts.  Barging into her home like you own the place when you’ve only been in Gensokyo for maybe six months yourself? She hates that. It was _so_ hard for her to adjust. Did you know about that little bit of trivia?”

“Cool.” I tried moving. Actually, that didn’t work either, which might explain why I wasn’t flying.

“I fucking told you, you utter moron!” Will groaned loudly. “You need to stick a middle finger at canon’s face! I _told_ you, but that was _last_ time and now, NO, of course you don’t remember. Dream logic, huh? How’s _this_ for dream logic?” Will snapped his fingers, and I slowly fell towards the bush.

But it wasn’t _slow_. I was moving slowly, sure, but I felt all of the G-force I’d have felt if I were actually falling. It was frightening.

“Okay, here we go…” Will snapped his fingers again. My spine was now touching just a single branch of the plant, and it hurt as if it were slamming into me at high speeds. Actually, I bet it was. He was slowing down time and pausing it… jeez.

Thankfully, the pain was constant rather than on-and-off, so I managed to adjust to it quickly without much more than a grimace. “Okay, what’d you want,” I asked as politely as I could, given the situation. “And what’s happening?”

Will clasped his hands together. “Great! Great, great, great news, you hypocrite. Wanna go talk knives with the psycho?” He walked up to me and glared directly into my eyes, and by extension, my soul. “Are you STUPID?” he shouted.

Then he walked away a bit. “Or maybe, after all this time in Gensokyo, you’ve become suicidal. That’s cool too. They used to use shock therapy for that. Did you know that?”

“Yeah, I did,” I said annoyedly. “Why’d you bring that up?”

“Because, because…” Will ran up and slammed his fist into my ribs. However, instead of the expected physical pain, my magic began fluctuating wildly.

I screamed as my very essence began to destabilize as Will touched me, slowly disintegrating my sense of identity…

Then he stopped.

“There you go,” Will said. “See? We can’t touch. The symbolic nature of magic doesn’t get that two things like us can be the same one thing. So, if I were to put my chest in your face as my female form, not only would you go blind, as previously mentioned, but you’d be in excruciating pain for a while. Then you’d have a seizure and die. Fun stuff, right?” He smirked. “Now fly, you dipshit. If you die, that’s a huge shame, but I didn’t. You shouldn’t, or you’re not real. Bye! No more helping! You get two seconds before I dispel this pocket reality.”

Shit. I began searching my mind rapidly for anything that could help me.

” …And a one…”

 Fly, fly, fly… ah, Sanae said to lose your common sense… just gotta believe, huh. I never really did. I knew it was all a story-

“…two…”

Actually, no, I was dying. So, qualms aside, flying is possible, Sakuya did it, so I got my mind in the right mindset…

“A one two three four-” Will counted off drummer-style before snapping his fingers and reality came to a crushing-

******************

“M-My god, William, you scared me…” Sakuya held me, just above the shrubbery, princess-style. Ugh. She’d stopped time to save the damsel in distress, except that damsel was me and was less damsel-like than a pig in a detective costume. That is to say, _not_.

“Thought I’d do it, huh?” I bit my lip, honestly more concerned with the fact that Sakuya, despite her delicate build, was somehow able to carry me more easily than I would a stuffed animal. It was kind of embarrassing, actually. Add that to the fact my heart was still pounding from nearly dying? Not fun.

“Well, I mean…” Sakuya sighed, somewhat embarrassedly. “Sorry.”

“Jeez, though. That was freaking _intense_.”

“I’ll say…” Sakuya floated away from the bush with me still in her arms, before she finally set me upright. “You blacked out at the end, too. I thought you’d died of just the shock of being dropped like that.”

I brushed off the back of my hoodie, which I’d taken to wearing at the meetings due to its robe-ish-ness. A few leaves got swept off. “At least you caught me,” I said. “Will said you wouldn’t. Proves he’s wrong.”

“Will? …you mean, yourself?” Sakuya raised an eyebrow.

“No, I don’t go by Will…” I thought. Actually, now that I thought more about it, I didn’t know _anyone_ who went by Will. That was weird, because I’d just mentioned one. How strange. Amnesia, maybe. It was typical for self-inserts. Probably whoever got me stuck in Gensokyo in the first place. Not like I could say that out loud, though. “Actually, never mind. I must be delusional from the adrenaline or something,” I said instead. It was a good excuse.

Sakuya nodded. “Happened to the best of us. It’s not unusual to stop talking coherently when you’re recovering from a near-death experience.”

Thank goodness. “Um… Sakuya?” I asked. “Can we try that again? I nearly got it.”

“…seriously?” Sakuya shook her head. “Sorry, but no. That first time was hard enough on both of us.”

Wow, that’s what she said. Anyways, I shrugged. “I guess I’ll just try on my own then.”

I jumped a few times, tried to fly, and finally got it on the fifth run-through.

******************

“See?” I demonstrated my flight to Patchouli by floating up into the air and flying in a tiny circle without moving my body. “Easy.”

Sakuya shot me a glare from the table, where she was making tea, but otherwise did not protest to my bragging. Thank goodness.

Patchouli nodded. “Good, good. I see you’ve got fine control down better than Alice, like everyone else in Gensokyo. Good.”

“Shut up!” Alice called from the opposite corner of the library. She was making new dolls, since she’d lost so many in her practice battle with Patchouli. That was the downside to her danmaku- she needed actual ammo, unlike more-or-less everyone else. And, apparently, she couldn’t move focused, and she was _really_ sour about it.

“All right, good…” Patchouli nodded. “Yeah. Um… go spar with Sakuya outside, or something? We’re busy now. Also, Melanie hasn’t shown up yet, so if you see her, knife her, okay?”

“It would be my pleasure,” Sakuya said with a bow.

And, wait, did I get kicked out… _again_?

******************

“Well…” Sakuya glanced at the slightly-dented shrubbery from last time. “I suppose this is your first spellcard duel. I won’t go easy on you, of course, so don’t expect to win.”

“I’ll try, at least.” Then, a thought came to my mind. “Actually, before that, can I see your knife?”

Sakuya nodded, and drew it from her holster and handed it to me. “Careful not to cut yourself,” she said.

I nodded, and gave it a quick glance over. I pushed my fingers against the flat edge slightly, and was pleased to find it didn’t flop or bend. It was a good knife, but…

“This hilt is grey,” I noticed. “The ones you throw are blue, red, and green. So this isn’t it.”

Sakuya snatched back the knife. “Of course not. Throwing actual knives could actually kill someone. This is for informal duels, though I usually use some basic magic to dullen it during those. Nobody wants to actually get killed, you see. So, shall we go?”

“Sure.”

Sakuya floated up into the air, as did I. She moved away until there was a bit of distance between us, and began firing out a simple pattern of knives that orbited her while leaving behind a trail of smaller bullets. They came at me slowly, and it was easy to dodge even for me, a total beginner to real-life danmaku.

I fired back at her with my delayed-reaction danmaku, which she apparently found amusing, but it largely didn’t affect her, which was worrying.

“Ah, don’t worry about that, I _can_ feel it,” Sakuya called. “But as the ‘defensive party’, I get more cards as well as a defensive bonus of sorts from the duel barrier. You get fewer cards and no bonus, but you do get much more freedom for what you can do with your danmaku. So it’s a tradeoff.”

Ah. That made sense, and easily explained away the mechanics of the Touhou games in an in-universe way. Hip, hip, hooray.

As I began to fire back, just a simple laser from my hand, I noticed the duel border flickering into existence. It was just a grey grid filled in a transparent grey-ish red color. You could easily see outside, but also could see the barrier well enough to not crash into it. Nice.

Sakuya gave me an approving nod as I weaved through her pattern, and then declared her first spellcard. That part should’ve been easy. After all, I’d read the Grimoire of Marisa over and over again, and played through every game Sakuya was in. As in all of the Touhou games. But still, I knew most of her cards by heart.

So, I was incredibly surprised when she declared “Time Sign ~「Quadruple Paradox」!”

I was hit _immediately_ as four incredibly fast clones of her shot outwards and began attacking in a trail behind her, firing knife danmaku in circles as they went.

******************

“Not bad for your first fight,” Sakuya said amusedly. “Especially against someone like me.”

“Yeah, well…” I sighed, and looked behind me at the Scarlet Devil Mansion’s outer wall. “It’d be nice if you unpinned me.”

And yes, I was pinned. Sakuya had pinned me to the wall with her knife danmaku after she won the duel. Why? I had no idea.

“No,” Sakuya said with a massive smile on her face. “You’ll have to do it yourself.”

And then she went back inside.

“…stupid pad maid,” I muttered as I got to work unpinning myself. And, contrary to fanon, I wasn’t knifed, because she was too far away to hear me.

_Nice._


	8. Sumbit Your Worst OCs Please

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A contest. Hoo boy.

“Patchouli, that is a _terrible_ ship,” I told the overly-enthusiastic magician of the house.

Patchouli looked down at her blueprints and sighed. “Yeah, the energy distribution could be done _way_ better. Lemme go just…” She took away the blueprints to her corner of the library and got back to work.

Alice sat in her own corner as well, leaving me to my own devices once again in a library filled with what I assume to be a theoretically infinite number of books. Well, that was boring. And since this chapter isn’t technically canon to the story, as demonstrated by her designing a ship. That means I can basically do whatever, so… well, I’m bored anyways, and probably, the author of this _lovely_ piece of work is as well.

But, as a self-insert that tends to be a little rebellious, I can still make promises _for_ the author. I’m arguably him, after all.

I cleared my throat.

“ _And now, my lovely readers, it’s time for a stolen idea for a competition!_ ” I shouted enthusiastically in my best gameshow host impression as I spun around 90 degrees to face a hypothetical camera. “ _Which one of you can write the worst OC? Write up a crappy OC, or just submit your own, and the worst of them all will die in this story’s canon! On-camera, in-chapter, and not even in a crappy flashback scene! If you’re bored, submit another author’s OC that you particularly hate! I won’t know the difference! Put it in a review or comment, depending on your site! That is all!”_ I cleared my throat again. It was now sore from all the enthused shouting.

Patchouli stared at me from her corner, looked as if she wanted to say something, and then decided against it.

“Um, so yeah.” I shrugged. “That’s the deal. Go, my minions. Ahahaha. Oh, and if anyone writes a good OC in there, I reserve the exclusive right to steal it!” I gave a two-fingered salute. “Also, Ice-Climbers style duos are allowed. That is all.”

I could’ve sworn that crickets chirped.

“…the hell?” Alice said.

I shrugged. “Don’t worry, this isn’t canon to the fic anyways.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, this is actually happening.


	9. It died

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 1 of the end

_A/N: Thanks for the submissions! Jimbob the OC has won the contest! He was the only submission, though. Kind of telling about my fanbase that the only one I get is a half-baked silly ‘random’ character. Welcome to the final arc of Shameless Self-Insert. **Without the usual sarcasm that’s often heard attached to the phrase** , **I hope you’re happy. I am.  I hope you share the feeling.**_

******************

I am in a room. I am quite often in a room, I find, whiling away my time doing nothing in particular. I write. I write stories.

There is a story in my room. It grows and grows every time I feed it a word. It is one of many, many stories. I hate this story. It has been bad to me- it is unlike the others. The others feed on my words. This one feeds on my psyche.

Since I began feeding the story, it has taken three things.

One- my feelings.

Two- my expression.

Three- my innocence.

Sometimes, when people look away from me, my smile will vanish. I will realize I was only smiling to make them feel better. Sometimes, I look away from people. People who are rude to those I hold dear. Not often, though, and I never turn fully away from anything. A grudge, a love… A story.

There is a choice in my room. It hangs over my head constantly, and whispers to me. It speaks to me of things that could have been, had I not fed the story. It tells me that it’s not too late to turn back, that it’s not too late to end. To continue what I was doing before. But, out of some morbid curiosity, I fed it. I fed it until it bloated, until it became too big for its space, until it drove away everyone that once loved it.

There is a person in my room. His name is William. There’s many more people, actually. Yuki Kagome, a sociable woman with fine taste in the arts. A short, red-haired boy named Phonora. There’s more, too, a communist, a skeleton, and a few others. They like to weigh down on my back. There’s Yuki’s brother, too, but he died a long, long time ago.

There’s Jimbob. He did not exist a month ago. He will not exist, and he has never existed yet, nor does he exist. I imagine him to be somewhat fluffy, a nice man. Despite his taste for cutlery.

I despise Jimbob. And Yuki. And Phonora. William, I am sure I will come to despise. But I will or do hate all of them. But I have to keep them with me. If I don’t, I will forget what I’ve done.

“Hey, you’re taking a while.”

A cat speaks to me. A striped cat. He is a friend.

“Hello.” I turn to the cat. “I am writing. The next chapter will contain Yukari Yakumo.”

“C’mon, son, you can do better than that.” The cat has 800,000 words. I used to wish to best him. Now? I wish I had not wished at all.

“I don’t like this part.” A candy speaks now. He has no words, but he knows words. He doesn’t create, but he modifies. He is my second least favorite of the three. He wishes to take my story.

My story. My cancerous growth, hiding in my hard drive and my USB and my mind. There is more of it written than will ever be shared. Than I could ever share. Almost 10,000.

There are people in my story. Marisa, strong and proud and closer to herself than she can imagine. Ayano, gentle and kind, longing for an escape from a reality she doesn’t belong to. Shiki, judgmental and strict and with a past that is not hers. She longs to be a statue again, and this is her true past. But not here.

I wish people would look at it, sometimes. But they never do, and that’s fine. It doesn’t cast a good light on me.

There are more people. Tani, energetic and drunk, a brilliance her world does not deserve. Nitori, a bundle of hatred, hating the thing that sustains her. There’s Yukari, biding her time in a place no one can see. She was going to be brought down, one day, by her own patience. But that’s the most stupid idea I’ve ever had.

But those people aren’t important.

The cat speaks, “So how’s Chapter 10 coming along?”

“It is coming along fine.” I reply. Because it is. It has been for a while now. Hanging in limbo.

My fatal flaw is my rigid adherence to opposites. I sometimes feel like opposites, in a way. Dysfunctional and yet functional. Logical and yet emotional. Bad or good. And it reflects in my writing. I write bad things. I write good things. I laugh. I cry.

Sometimes, I do neither, and I regret it.

Many people fear things. Spiders. Clouds. Bears. Death. Politics. Religion. Walls. Stairs. I fear boredom. I fear a lack of anything, of no response whatsoever. Perhaps that reflects too. I try my best to make people like my work. The cat, the candy, the elusive crocodile that lives in its own world of eagles and bright red and black.

Meta is funny. Right? Haha. Laughing. Oh, look! He said TVTropes! How funny! I’m having a chuckle, right now, and I will review his work, in depth, and tell him how to proceed, the cat once said. He told me how to feed a story. What was wrong and what was right.

But it’s not fun to have a story with an unreliable narrator. So, here’s an idea- you can talk to them. Review their works. PM them. If you want. In fact, you probably shouldn’t, they’ll get angry if I send too many people their way. So choose on your own. But here they are: “SKOOLATOON.” He’s friendly. “I’m Delicious and Nutritious.” I don’t know where he is. The last one does not show up even on Google, so he’s as lost as a star gone supernova.

Hubris brought me this far.

Let’s see how far I can take it.


	10. I killed it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 2 of the end

**_A/N: It’s funny- I realize now that I have made a horrible mistake. I shouldn’t have proofread anything. Crappy OCs, crappy characterizations, crappy spelling… that’s what people enjoy. They laugh at it. I would like that. But instead I tried to do something impossible perfectly, like only one man had done before me. I failed._ **

******************

I fed William to it one night in a small, cramped bed, in a sweltering heat, when I couldn’t sleep. A family member had just died. She was amazing. Over one hundred years old. I don’t think it was because of that.

I think it was politics. That night when a new leader reigned over our country, something broke in me, from panic or otherwise. Nothing too severe, but just enough to make me do something drastic. A single time.

I slept maybe three hours in the following days, writing and writing. I had two chapters ready a day. Eventually, it dwindled to one as I began to sleep longer. Eventually, I took a break. Then another. I uploaded, and then I finished it. But people wanted more.

I created Sophia. A flawed, broken device of my own creation, designed to wreak apocalypse upon a land that wasn’t mine.

Out of my little fluffy metaphor, though, she was supposed to, through her own foolishness, destroy Gensokyo. That would be the end. She would lose her innocence in the flashiest way possible. She was to walk away from the story, into the sunset, with all her memories and experience in writing, to go do something else. Something better.

There is a monster in my room. It’s a Shameless Sadistic Incompetent, Giving Some Others Interesting Amusements Because Crap Got Awful. Was it escapism? Maybe. Perhaps not.

Let’s say that I was to upload Chapters 8, 9, and 10. Or whatever number it’s on now. Would people read them? A few. One or two or three. Would they care? Maybe. But the truth still stands- this started as a thought experiment, a challenge upon myself. I failed it. And the chapters aren’t even good, only there because the story must go on.

Make no mistake, this is not my best work and never will be. I thought it’d be entertaining. It wasn’t. It’s not very good, and a mess to read. The worst part- it’s not even bad. It’s mediocre- a state of nothingness I want to stay as far away from as possible.

I am influenced far too easily by things like the cat. Even those that I shouldn’t be influenced by. The contest was a cause of that. No more.

So, I suppose I’ll give everyone some closing comments before I pull the plug on this mess.

To the cat: Garfield isn’t funny. Jim Davis is horrible, and he needs to be stopped.

To the candy: I never told you that you could invite the crocodile. I told you to wait.

To the crocodile: Find something else to enjoy. Eagles aren’t your style. Try hammers. It’s funnier, at least.

And now, I will move on to something else. I’m not gone. Not nearly. I’ve never been gone, not even in the times when I vanished, leaving one of my stories to die. Gentlemanly Yukari, or Alice and Oz from way back in the day. I don’t plan to be gone any longer. There are stories to be told. The tale of Rei and her struggle with Gandiva. A story about a little girl in a littler world. Some others, too.

But from now on, there _will_ be closure.

And cut.

 

 

 

 

 

Also, _anyone_ who makes a dick joke within 50 feet of me will be executed. No exceptions.


End file.
